Tricia Sullivan
You Can Call Me Al
Impossible to know how the shined-up man got past the
Silver Brush checkpoint on Highway 6. By all logic he should
have been shot. How he got the Honda CRC out of gas-deprived
Los Sombres was another mystery. The guy couldn’t
even steer, because at 2:26 pm on 17 July 2006 - only hours
before the first missile strikes - he crashed it in the drive of the
Triple Cross Ranch.
The drive was a mile long and it arrowed toward the mountain
in whose shadow the house was set. At that hour the sky
reached in all directions, empty synthetic blue. Crackly shadows
delineated the edges of every wrinkle on the mountain,
rendering the scene in unreal 2D. Nothing moved. All the
world a photograph as the Honda, puttering along at 25 mph
with its lights on, veered to the left and crunched the postand-
rail fence that Pavarotti had just finished repairing. The
vehicle proceeded a little way into the field, dragging some of
the fence, and then stalled.
Xavier had been up at the house when he heard the fence
go. He dropped the dog-eared copy of Western Rider on his
bed and made his way outside. When he saw the Honda, he
broke into a run. Even so, Pavarotti and Les got there before
him. By the time Xavier skidded to a stop, Pavarotti’d taken off
his Stetson and was scratching his balding head as he stood
back from the driver splayed across the airbag.
‘He don’t seem hurt, but he’s out cold,’ Les offered.
Xavier slipped around Pavarotti. The man behind the
wheel looked about forty. He was dark and hairy with
strong Caspian Sea features, dressed in a clean red Polo shirt
and freshly-pressed khakis. The cool of the Honda’s A/C
drifted out of the car carrying the smell of leather and breath
mints.
Xavier looked at the gas gauge.
‘Three quarters,’ he said. ‘Which way’d he come from?’
Pavarotti shrugged. Pavarotti never talked; since the shine
fucked with his brain he only sang Italian opera. Hence the
nickname.
‘Didn’t notice, kid,’ Les translated.
Xavier shook his head. There was no point in saying, ‘How
the fuck can you not notice a car coming up the road for the
first time in months when you’re standing right there?’ because
Les would just say something about some Astros game happened
back in 2004 and Pavarotti would turn his head to one
side and spit in a vain attempt to act like Doug. So Xavier went
around to the passenger side and checked the glove compartment.
The GPS would be useless under signal quarantine, but
he found an AAAmap of the city with a route highlighted from
the interstate exit 17 to the reservation border, just up the road
from here.
Xavier checked the man’s pulse. Sixty-something. The man’s
eyes fluttered beneath closed lids. Xavier peeled one eyelid back
and the man’s feedback light emitted a feeble beam in the afternoon
sunshine. American Dream insignia. Top of the line, and
the beam lacked an alphanumeric. Probably custom.
Through the windshield Xavier could see more people
coming. Hopi weavers. The day men. Refugee women running
after a gaggle of kids. Place was like a disturbed anthill. Doug
and his son Rex were riding up from the main road, their horses
in a hard sweat.
Xavier got out of the car. He saw Chumana break into a run,
leaving the rest of the crowd at the top of the drive. Xavier tried
to think where his mother would be at this hour, but it was
hard to look at Chumana and think about anything else at the
same time. Her legs ate up the ground with long, easy strides.
Her nipples always seemed to be hard under whatever she was
wearing - today, a Black Eyed Peas T-shirt she had outgrown.
She came to a breathless halt and looked down at him. She had
a wide face with high cheekbones, swollen lips and a flat, perfectly
symmetrical nose. She also had black eyes that seemed to
draw Xavier in; those eyes saw a boy.
She would always see a boy, because that’s what he would
always fucking be. Short, skinny, immature.
‘Take a look at his feeds,’ Xavier said before she could ask
any questions.
She shot him a horrified look. ‘Is he - is he alive?’
‘Yeah, yeah, he’s alive. Quick, look at the feeds before Doug
gets here.’
Chumana crawled into the car. She moved the guy’s hair out
of the way to check the sequin-sized feedback lights fitted to his
forehead.
‘They’re American Dream,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I know, but-’
‘Wait a second. There’s no - did you see a series code?’
‘No. That’s what I-’
‘Xavier, get in here.’
Xavier crawled into the passenger seat. He was practically on
top of her. Her black hair smelled of Breck. A confusion of hoofbeats
sounded on the driveway.
‘Look at that!’ She pointed to the edge of the illumination.
‘Did you ever see that signature before?’
‘No,’ Xavier said. ‘Maybe we should look for some ID. He
could be somebody important.’
He opened the glove compartment. There were no registration
documents.
‘Check his wallet.’
But the guy didn’t have a wallet. Just as Xavier was trying
to reach around to the guy’s back left pocket, the guy
stirred and mumbled something. The roan flank of Doug’s
horse appeared in the frame of the windshield. Doug dismounted
and said something to Powaqa. Pavarotti put his hat
back on.
Xavier backed out of the car. Chumana stayed, examining the
feedback beams.
‘Stall them,’ she hissed. ‘I think he’s a Rider.’
‘Time to stand back now, kids,’ Doug drawled, and Rex dismounted
beside him. Rex shot a glance at Chumana and then at
Xavier. He waggled his tongue. Xavier glared back.
Doug said, ‘We tracked him from the interstate. Driving like
an old lady. If he’s coming from the city he could be rigged up
any which way.’
Chumana came out of the car and started talking quietly to
Powaqa, who was her great-aunt. The other women formed a
loose circle around the two. Melanie broke away after a minute
and hobbled over to the car.
‘We’d better get him inside,’ Melanie said. She was a big
woman and most people didn’t argue with her. She leaned into
the car and satisfied herself that it was all right to move the guy.
‘Come on. We’ll put him on this sheet.’
Melanie used to be a doctor. Luckily, the Fall hadn’t had
much effect on her professional knowledge, even if it had
done . . . other things. Xavier started to help her but Powaqa
called him away.
‘Come with me, Xavier. I need help getting the big pot out of
the cave.’
Xavier offered Melanie an apologetic glance and went with
Powaqa.
‘What’s the pot for?’ he asked.
‘We’ll cook him and eat him,’ Powaqa said.
‘Are you doing medicine?’
She answered his question with one of her own. ‘Is he a
Rider, Xavier?’
‘Chumana thinks so.’
‘Well, that’s pretty interesting. Come on, you catch one of
those mules.’
It was always a production when Powaqa decided to do a
medicine ceremony. The big pot had to be kept in a cave up on
the hill behind the house, and the only way to get it in and out
was by mule. Xavier had never argued with Powaqa about the
practicality of this because Powaqa was a member of the Hopi
nation, some kind of medicine woman supposedly, and if she
was willing to help the refugees that was good enough for
Xavier. But the big pot was always a pain in the ass.
The two of them had just harnessed the mule and started to
walk it past the garage when Xavier’s mother came running up,
trailing her knitting. Her face was flushed and she looked so
unexpectedly pretty that he almost didn’t recognize her.
‘Who is it? Who’s in the car?’
‘Mom,’ Xavier said, going towards her and holding out his
hands. ‘It’s not him. It’s not Dad.’
‘Are you sure? Are you sure he’s not in the back?’ And she
threw her head desperately to one side, trying to look past
Xavier and make eye contact with Powaqa, who sorrowfully
shook her head.
‘He’s coming back to us. I know he is.’
‘Mom, it’s not him.’
She let go of Xavier’s hands, deflated. She seemed to shrink
and lose colour right before his eyes. In the old days, Xavier’s
mother had put on all the little fake affectations that adults had.
Before the Fall she would have made some effort to hide her
disappointment. Now she could hide nothing. Emotions passed
right across her face. Shine complexes, too, but then she was
one of the lucky ones. She was alive.
Xavier’s father was not. He had been among many victims of
the Fall who had suffered PCP-style flip-out and eventual
defenestration from the seventeenth floor of the office building
where he worked. Xavier had heard about it from a girl in his
class who had seen it on a YouTube download smuggled into
the quarantine perimeter by Sam Ghost Money Power.
He hadn’t told his mother. Maybe it was cruel to let her go on
hoping her cheating man might show up one day, begging forgiveness.
Maybe it was selfish. Because if she knew Xavier’s
dad was gone, she might try something suicidal herself. And
even though she was crazy, Xavier needed her to not be dead.
Powaqa gave Xavier the mule’s lead. Then she took Xavier’s
mother’s hands and said, ‘Rosa, we’re going to need a lot of
wood for the medicine fire.’
Powaqa had a face like the land itself: dark and guttered
with dry channels, a tearless expanse of sadness. She was old.
Her teeth were long and curved, and her mouth trembled when
she was thinking. Eyes: like caves with lakes in them. She
blinked slowly. You knew right away when you first talked to
her that she was artless. She never tried to fake you out.
Xavier’s mother nodded, like a doll. Tears welled in her eyes
and she blinked them away.
‘Wood,’ she repeated. ‘OK. I’ll just put away my knitting.’
She went back to the house. The receiving blanket she was
knitting for her imaginary baby dragged in the dust after her.
Powaqa turned towards the mountain and kept walking,
expecting Xavier to follow. And he did.
Impossible to know how the shined-up man got past the
Silver Brush checkpoint on Highway 6. By all logic he should
have been shot. How he got the Honda CRC out of gas-deprived
Los Sombres was another mystery. The guy couldn’t
even steer, because at 2:26 pm on 17 July 2006 - only hours
before the first missile strikes - he crashed it in the drive of the
Triple Cross Ranch.
The drive was a mile long and it arrowed toward the mountain
in whose shadow the house was set. At that hour the sky
reached in all directions, empty synthetic blue. Crackly shadows
delineated the edges of every wrinkle on the mountain,
rendering the scene in unreal 2D. Nothing moved. All the
world a photograph as the Honda, puttering along at 25 mph
with its lights on, veered to the left and crunched the postand-
rail fence that Pavarotti had just finished repairing. The
vehicle proceeded a little way into the field, dragging some of
the fence, and then stalled.
Xavier had been up at the house when he heard the fence
go. He dropped the dog-eared copy of Western Rider on his
bed and made his way outside. When he saw the Honda, he
broke into a run. Even so, Pavarotti and Les got there before
him. By the time Xavier skidded to a stop, Pavarotti’d taken off
his Stetson and was scratching his balding head as he stood
back from the driver splayed across the airbag.
‘He don’t seem hurt, but he’s out cold,’ Les offered.
Xavier slipped around Pavarotti. The man behind the
wheel looked about forty. He was dark and hairy with
strong Caspian Sea features, dressed in a clean red Polo shirt
and freshly-pressed khakis. The cool of the Honda’s A/C
drifted out of the car carrying the smell of leather and breath
mints.
Xavier looked at the gas gauge.
‘Three quarters,’ he said. ‘Which way’d he come from?’
Pavarotti shrugged. Pavarotti never talked; since the shine
fucked with his brain he only sang Italian opera. Hence the
nickname.
‘Didn’t notice, kid,’ Les translated.
Xavier shook his head. There was no point in saying, ‘How
the fuck can you not notice a car coming up the road for the
first time in months when you’re standing right there?’ because
Les would just say something about some Astros game happened
back in 2004 and Pavarotti would turn his head to one
side and spit in a vain attempt to act like Doug. So Xavier went
around to the passenger side and checked the glove compartment.
The GPS would be useless under signal quarantine, but
he found an AAAmap of the city with a route highlighted from
the interstate exit 17 to the reservation border, just up the road
from here.
Xavier checked the man’s pulse. Sixty-something. The man’s
eyes fluttered beneath closed lids. Xavier peeled one eyelid back
and the man’s feedback light emitted a feeble beam in the afternoon
sunshine. American Dream insignia. Top of the line, and
the beam lacked an alphanumeric. Probably custom.
Through the windshield Xavier could see more people
coming. Hopi weavers. The day men. Refugee women running
after a gaggle of kids. Place was like a disturbed anthill. Doug
and his son Rex were riding up from the main road, their horses
in a hard sweat.
Xavier got out of the car. He saw Chumana break into a run,
leaving the rest of the crowd at the top of the drive. Xavier tried
to think where his mother would be at this hour, but it was
hard to look at Chumana and think about anything else at the
same time. Her legs ate up the ground with long, easy strides.
Her nipples always seemed to be hard under whatever she was
wearing - today, a Black Eyed Peas T-shirt she had outgrown.
She came to a breathless halt and looked down at him. She had
a wide face with high cheekbones, swollen lips and a flat, perfectly
symmetrical nose. She also had black eyes that seemed to
draw Xavier in; those eyes saw a boy.
She would always see a boy, because that’s what he would
always fucking be. Short, skinny, immature.
‘Take a look at his feeds,’ Xavier said before she could ask
any questions.
She shot him a horrified look. ‘Is he - is he alive?’
‘Yeah, yeah, he’s alive. Quick, look at the feeds before Doug
gets here.’
Chumana crawled into the car. She moved the guy’s hair out
of the way to check the sequin-sized feedback lights fitted to his
forehead.
‘They’re American Dream,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I know, but-’
‘Wait a second. There’s no - did you see a series code?’
‘No. That’s what I-’
‘Xavier, get in here.’
Xavier crawled into the passenger seat. He was practically on
top of her. Her black hair smelled of Breck. A confusion of hoofbeats
sounded on the driveway.
‘Look at that!’ She pointed to the edge of the illumination.
‘Did you ever see that signature before?’
‘No,’ Xavier said. ‘Maybe we should look for some ID. He
could be somebody important.’
He opened the glove compartment. There were no registration
documents.
‘Check his wallet.’
But the guy didn’t have a wallet. Just as Xavier was trying
to reach around to the guy’s back left pocket, the guy
stirred and mumbled something. The roan flank of Doug’s
horse appeared in the frame of the windshield. Doug dismounted
and said something to Powaqa. Pavarotti put his hat
back on.
Xavier backed out of the car. Chumana stayed, examining the
feedback beams.
‘Stall them,’ she hissed. ‘I think he’s a Rider.’
‘Time to stand back now, kids,’ Doug drawled, and Rex dismounted
beside him. Rex shot a glance at Chumana and then at
Xavier. He waggled his tongue. Xavier glared back.
Doug said, ‘We tracked him from the interstate. Driving like
an old lady. If he’s coming from the city he could be rigged up
any which way.’
Chumana came out of the car and started talking quietly to
Powaqa, who was her great-aunt. The other women formed a
loose circle around the two. Melanie broke away after a minute
and hobbled over to the car.
‘We’d better get him inside,’ Melanie said. She was a big
woman and most people didn’t argue with her. She leaned into
the car and satisfied herself that it was all right to move the guy.
‘Come on. We’ll put him on this sheet.’
Melanie used to be a doctor. Luckily, the Fall hadn’t had
much effect on her professional knowledge, even if it had
done . . . other things. Xavier started to help her but Powaqa
called him away.
‘Come with me, Xavier. I need help getting the big pot out of
the cave.’
Xavier offered Melanie an apologetic glance and went with
Powaqa.
‘What’s the pot for?’ he asked.
‘We’ll cook him and eat him,’ Powaqa said.
‘Are you doing medicine?’
She answered his question with one of her own. ‘Is he a
Rider, Xavier?’
‘Chumana thinks so.’
‘Well, that’s pretty interesting. Come on, you catch one of
those mules.’
It was always a production when Powaqa decided to do a
medicine ceremony. The big pot had to be kept in a cave up on
the hill behind the house, and the only way to get it in and out
was by mule. Xavier had never argued with Powaqa about the
practicality of this because Powaqa was a member of the Hopi
nation, some kind of medicine woman supposedly, and if she
was willing to help the refugees that was good enough for
Xavier. But the big pot was always a pain in the ass.
The two of them had just harnessed the mule and started to
walk it past the garage when Xavier’s mother came running up,
trailing her knitting. Her face was flushed and she looked so
unexpectedly pretty that he almost didn’t recognize her.
‘Who is it? Who’s in the car?’
‘Mom,’ Xavier said, going towards her and holding out his
hands. ‘It’s not him. It’s not Dad.’
‘Are you sure? Are you sure he’s not in the back?’ And she
threw her head desperately to one side, trying to look past
Xavier and make eye contact with Powaqa, who sorrowfully
shook her head.
‘He’s coming back to us. I know he is.’
‘Mom, it’s not him.’
She let go of Xavier’s hands, deflated. She seemed to shrink
and lose colour right before his eyes. In the old days, Xavier’s
mother had put on all the little fake affectations that adults had.
Before the Fall she would have made some effort to hide her
disappointment. Now she could hide nothing. Emotions passed
right across her face. Shine complexes, too, but then she was
one of the lucky ones. She was alive.
Xavier’s father was not. He had been among many victims of
the Fall who had suffered PCP-style flip-out and eventual
defenestration from the seventeenth floor of the office building
where he worked. Xavier had heard about it from a girl in his
class who had seen it on a YouTube download smuggled into
the quarantine perimeter by Sam Ghost Money Power.
He hadn’t told his mother. Maybe it was cruel to let her go on
hoping her cheating man might show up one day, begging forgiveness.
Maybe it was selfish. Because if she knew Xavier’s
dad was gone, she might try something suicidal herself. And
even though she was crazy, Xavier needed her to not be dead.
Powaqa gave Xavier the mule’s lead. Then she took Xavier’s
mother’s hands and said, ‘Rosa, we’re going to need a lot of
wood for the medicine fire.’
Powaqa had a face like the land itself: dark and guttered
with dry channels, a tearless expanse of sadness. She was old.
Her teeth were long and curved, and her mouth trembled when
she was thinking. Eyes: like caves with lakes in them. She
blinked slowly. You knew right away when you first talked to
her that she was artless. She never tried to fake you out.
Xavier’s mother nodded, like a doll. Tears welled in her eyes
and she blinked them away.
‘Wood,’ she repeated. ‘OK. I’ll just put away my knitting.’
She went back to the house. The receiving blanket she was
knitting for her imaginary baby dragged in the dust after her.
Powaqa turned towards the mountain and kept walking,
expecting Xavier to follow. And he did.
All material copyright Tricia Sullivan 2010