| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Todd Thorne / Artwork by Lee Kuruganti |
| To Soar Free |
Suffering death came to her door every day that week. Most often the grim faces appeared solo, but
sometimes family, lovers, or dear friends accompanied, each suffering in their own fashion. Alise greeted them
as she had for the past 18 years, with a welcome embrace, rapt attention, compassion, and empathy--always
limitless empathy, at least she made it seem.
There was the AIDS victim on Monday. The frail woman succumbing to congestive heart failure on Tuesday.
Wednesday brought a shriveled coal miner enduring black lung and advanced emphysema while Thursday
bore a man nearing end-stage hepatitis.
They arrived just before the sun blazed the start of its daily sojourn across the midsummer New Mexico sky.
With their help, Alise had quilts prepared, financials transacted, paperwork completed, and instructions
reviewed, all within an hour before she ushered them on their way to their final stop.
After 18 years and an encyclopedia's worth of maladies, none gave her pause anymore; well-rehearsed
empathy made for a fine hooded cloak. Secure within her shell, she marveled over each victim's courage and
fortitude in the throes of their personal torture. Such stamina and resolve they showed. Such unbreakable will.
Should fate be so unkind to her, could her spirit be as indomitable?
No. Far from it, she feared.
Cloak or not, Friday's victim wrenched her heart. It was a kid, Thad, 10-years-old and living too long with the
leukemia that played a vicious game of hide-and-seek with no intent of surrender.
"I won't hurt you," Alise said as she delved the boy, who recoiled at her touch like she was some kind of ghoul.
Her turn to cringe followed. Thad's inner beauty--an unsullied cherub so new to discovery, so eager to
experience, to flourish--neared total eclipse from the defiling shadow.
It was cruel. Wrong. Frustrating.
Such an innocent, promising spirit should not be shackled to a fatally poisoned container.
Kids were the hardest, chinking her armor like nothing else could. As her hands left his face, Thad's mom stood
beside her and wept tears of sorrow and joy that came with every bitter end welded to a desperately hopeful
beginning.
Alise knelt before the boy's gaunt figure and took his trembling fingers, tiny popsicles lying limp in her grasp.
"What's your favorite place in the whole, wide world?"
"San..." Thad gulped a raspy breath. "San Diego Zoo."
"Perfect."
She knew just the quilt and fetched it for him.
"One of my favorite zoo exhibits." She unrolled at his feet a lanky polar bear rearing up to embrace an
ice-shrouded dawn of crystalline blues on white.
"Could you imagine riding on the back of something so big, strong, and fearless? If he carried you on your last
ride, would that make it better? Something extra special?"
For a fleeting instant, the boy's exhausted eyes lit. It was enough.
It wasn't possible to provide too many special touches for the children. Never would be. Not for her.
The rest of the day Alise couldn't quilt, could barely breathe until Thad's moment finally came in the fire of the
setting sun. She sobbed all night over the senseless waste, as she'd done for every child, beginning with her
own.
Light tapping woke her. She wrapped her robe against the dawn chill and shuffled to the door. Two faces
waited there in the mottled light, a much older man with a younger woman clutching his arm.
"Hi. I...I'm Susan Campbell and this--"
"Go away," Alise said, harsher than she intended. "I can't help anyone on the weekend."
"Please! If you'd just listen..."
"Monday. Come back then."
She whirled from Susan Campbell's desperate expression and went to the kitchen to brew tea. As extra
dollops of honey spiraled into the cup, tires crunched on gravel and faded.
They would be back, she knew, and many more besides, with more Thads and other kids like him in an
endless parade of victims. An 18-year-long parade. Despite her heavy touch with the honey jar, bitterness
persisted on each swallow and a dull ache began deep in her chest.
At lunch, Junior dropped by to collect fees and forms from the prior week's tally. As usual, he politely declined
her offer of a sandwich and conversation and hurried off with claims of too many pressing tribal duties. He was
very young and vibrant, brimming with enough life for three. Alise couldn't fault him. Who would want to linger
any longer than necessary at death's last way station?
She spent the day quilting and, other than the rattling cycle of the window air conditioner, oblivious to the
passing hours. But the Hessian cloth backings abraded her, more than usual, even through her thick calluses.
Each stitch dragged, as if she were forcing her needle through sun-cured cowhide. The ache persisted,
fluttering under her breastbone like an ailing, second heart. She willed herself on until her hands could take
no more and she surrendered her weary body early to bed.
Heavy thuds woke her at daybreak. Susan Campbell stood at the door again, alone this time.
"I'm really sorry, but..."
"Monday. That's the rule."
Susan's voice pleaded behind her as Alise shuffled to the kitchen, refusing to listen. This one will be bad.
As if echoing her worry, the ache inside her throbbed, worse than yesterday.
Sunday wore a veil of dense clouds wrapped with an oppressive air, ominous, but the threatened storm never
broke. Alise struggled. She felt as if she'd run a full marathon with collapsed lungs and a seized heart. The ill
feelings intensified as the gloomy day ground on. Late in the afternoon she called Junior to come fetch her.
By the time he dropped her off on the high bluff, the ceremony was nearly finished. Alise stood patiently
outside the circle, shielded from gusts spawned off the stillborn storm, and stared out over the vast burial
ground far below.
In the distance her shack was a speck nudging the foot of Singing Mountain, the name of her solitary peak
neighbor she much preferred over its given Mescalero title. Sitting on her porch late in the evening as the dry
southwest winds spun dust devils in a dervish dance, the mountain rocks keened and moaned a somber tune
of appreciation, as though the mountain acknowledged her importance in the relationship they shared.
After the breeze bore away the last ceremonial chant, Ulysses hobbled over. The wise one had to be near 90.
Though his stooped frame, gnarled hands, and etched wrinkles suggested an even more ancient age, Alise
envisioned a spirit eternally young and energetic whenever she spoke to the medicine man.
"A busy week for you," the deep voice said, booming in her ears even after completing two hours of
continuous chanting. "With an especially tragic and difficult end. I am sorry."
"It's why I needed to see you, Ulysses. I feel...pained. Still. Here two days afterward. Never before like this,
though. Not this bad. I wonder if..."
"Your pain," Ulysses said, turning to her and leveling a gaze from razor sharp eyes the color of beach sand,
"began well over 18 years ago. Mostly, you've kept it away. Suppressed. I've watched it lurk within you, biding
its time, which has finally come."
"I don't understand."
"Take my hand."
She frowned and placed her fingers on his fleshy palm. He clenched his grip and her hand felt like it caressed
the heart of a blast furnace. Just as quickly, he let go. Her fingers tingled as they cooled in the high mesa
breezes.
"Tomorrow, you can have Junior drive you to Alamogordo and let the big hospital and formally-educated
doctors examine you. Or you can accept my diagnosis. There is darkness inside you, Alise, feeding, and being
fed by, your pain. You've seen it countless times in the people who come to you. It has rooted in your breast
and spread throughout. And it cannot be dispelled, not by medicines of mine or any other."
"Then...I'm going to die?"
The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he'd heard a wry joke. "From the darkness? Yes."
"How long?"
He drew a deep breath and gazed out over the parched scrub and puckered swales of the burial ground.
"A question we all might like to know at some point, though we fear hearing too short a time or, worse
perhaps, too long. I don't have that vision, Alise, but my concern for you is the latter. You understand I mean
you no disrespect. None before have offered anywhere near the years of unselfish, devoted service you've
given my people and, more importantly, humanity."
"It's...." Tiny prickles of heat blossomed on her cheeks. Compliments from Ulysses came very rarely if at all.
"Perhaps I should have mentioned it before." His voice wavered ever so slightly.
"No need to...." She swallowed hard. "Thank you, Ulysses. For telling me...everything."
"You had the right to know. So then, you've met the one to replace you?"
That caught her off-guard. "No. No, I can't say I have."
"I see." Again, his mouth twitched. "Perhaps soon you will." He looked at her. "Should I call Junior to come pick
you up?"
She nodded. He limped off.
As long as she could remember, she had idolized the desert southwest: rugged, enduring landscapes, with
tenacious life forms able to persist in the harshest of conditions. It inspired her. A thing to draw strength from
beneath her cloak of detached rapport.
No longer.
Her armor had failed. Fate crooked a cruel finger and the terror she witnessed once-removed within those
parading past her door now snatched her in its clutches and squeezed. Her source of strength vanished, a
wisp of sand smoke dispersed by the desert wind.
What could she do? How to go on?
"Alise?"
"Y-yes, Ulysses?"
"For you...your exact time remaining...I might not know for sure. About you and what lies in your heart, I know
much better. You've shared your heart with so many whose resolve needed one last boost to carry them to
the end. Think about that. Depend on it for yourself. Your heart will not fail you. Of that I'm certain.
Understand?"
Hot tears flooded her eyes. She nodded without turning.
"One more thing. The decision when to go up the mountain is yours. Yours alone. There's no shame, no regret
should you decide to do so before your replacement arrives."
Now she spun and blinked at a trio of Ulysses jostling within the prism of her teardrops. "But I can't just go,
not without..."
"You can."
"What about people who..."
"We will find a way. The mountain will see to it. As it always has."
The ride back with Junior seemed much longer this time. They shared the desert silence until his tires skidded
to the end of her gravel drive.
"You'll call when you decide to go to the mountain?"
"What?" Halfway out the door of the rusty Bureau pickup, she paused. "Of course. You'll want to come collect
the money and papers for that week."
"Actually," he said in a hushed voice, "I'd like to drive you over to the trail head. With your permission. That
wouldn't be a problem, would it?"
"No." She stepped out into the swirling dust. "No problem at all. Tell me, Junior, how old are you?"
"Just turned seventeen. Last month."
"You've been driving me places how long?"
"Three years."
"I'm not sure how you got stuck with me this long, but thanks for all your help. You've made a difference in my
life and I really appreciate it."
"Likewise," he said, serious as he'd ever sounded.
She shut the door and the desert silence swallowed him up.
The next morning Susan Campbell stared at her for an uncomfortably chilly minute before speaking.
"Now can we see you?"
"Of course."
A fragile old man came through the door with Susan, carefully led by her into the small sitting room. Guiding,
positioning, correcting, she manipulated his every move like a department store mannequin.
"His name is Edmund Willis Campbell. My father." Susan spoke in a near whisper. She knuckled his chin and
brushed a fingertip across his lips.
Edmund stared ahead. Not one blink altered his vacant expression.
"Until six years ago," Susan said, "Daddy was a man more alive than any other. That's when the doctor
diagnosed Alzheimers. Daddy told him no."
"No?"
"His magic word. Had the power to halt a forest fire or stop a twister." She grimaced. "At least until then."
Edmund stared, unwilling or unable to offer any words of his own now, magic or otherwise.
"Daddy's disease is a particularly aggressive strain. What luck to get the biggest and baddest, huh? But that's
his nature, after all: never settle for anything second-class or merely average. So I guess I shouldn't expect..."
She caught herself, almost by surprise. "No. I should expect." She shuddered.
"Anyway, the doctor said it would destroy him. Bit-by-bit. A little each day. Not exactly those words, you
understand? Close though. I remember Daddy snorting. Laughing at him. 'You'll write a paper on the fight
you're about to see,' he told the doctor. Said he'd win awards. Prestige. Glory."
She sighed, squeezed her eyes shut.
"Somewhere deep inside, I...I feel he's still fighting. But...."
"But the doctor was right." Alise moved to stand before Edmund Willis Campbell.
"He was exactly right. No paper happened. No headlines. Glory. None of that. Only what the doctor described."
Alise squeezed the woman's slumped shoulder. "I'm Alise. I just want to check your father. This won't hurt
him."
Susan nodded.
Alise placed her hands alongside Edmund's haggard face and delved, probing what Ulysses called the spirit's
contour lines. Sometimes the ruptures and devastation jolted her, a natural reaction to perceived atrocities,
Ulysses had explained, which grave illness or mortal injury could inflict upon a person's essence. Then there
was the darkness--a smothering stain that blotted out the spirit like crude oil atop an ebb tide.
She braced for the worst.
Behind her, Susan chattered on about her father. About irony. He, a blue chip athlete and revered university
coach, proud to exhibit championship form and grace in every competition, now reduced to an embarrassing
also-ran, unable to even concede the contest. A contest he didn't belong in.
"So...so...." Susan's voice faltered. When she continued, her words were ice. "So this is my decision. I'm taking
this step on his behalf, asking for your help to put an end to it."
After Alise finished, they eased Edmund into the well-worn rocking chair and headed into the kitchen. Alise put
a pot of water on the stove and prepared two tea cups while she pondered how to present her findings. This
wasn't going to be easy.
"No sugar. Honey?"
Susan sat, hands folded, one breath dragging slowly after another through parted lips.
"Fine."
"Milk?"
"No."
"I apologize for turning you away this weekend."
"No need. I shouldn't have bothered you."
"Obviously, you understand what I do."
"Yes. I did my research. Considered all my...alternatives."
Alise knew what the woman had learned: nothing but bad options for a hopeless situation she didn't deserve.
No one did.
"Please understand that my role has specific responsibilities. Such as on weekends allowing the Mescalero
their customs. They conduct a ceremony, a sacred rite of passage for those departed the week before, which
is an essential part of the birth-to-death cycle. To the tribe, that ceremony is as vital as watering a
freshly-planted field, tilling and tending the growing crops, carefully harvesting the results, and preparing the
soil for another planting. Upset any of it and the cycle is ruined with horrible consequences."
"Of course. I'm really sorry. Had no idea."
The teapot whistled and then shrieked a protest as she snatched it and poured.
"Susan, your father isn't dying. At least not yet." She carried the cups over and sat across the kitchen table
from the frowning woman. "Did the doctor mention that?"
"He...suggested Daddy's body might be strong enough to last fifteen years or so with this. Fifteen years." The
frown cut deeper furrows into Susan's brow. "Understand me now. That's not my father in there. Not
anymore. It might still look something like him, but he's gone. You saw."
"I saw. You're wrong and exactly right. It is your father. And he is still fighting."
"Look...I've no idea what you did or how you know. I'll take your word for it. But what you can't know is... he
wouldn't want this. He would beg me to do what I'm asking of you."
"Really? It seemed to me he wasn't ready to give up. When the doctor said what was going to happen, you
mentioned how your father reacted. Would you expect anything less now?"
Through the steam wisps curling off her untouched tea, Susan stared at her. "You don't get it. Even in clear
defeat, a true champion still competes. He must. He's just waiting for the final whistle to blow. That's what I'm
doing."
"Maybe so. If I agree, though, you realize he must go up the mountain alone. You can't help him, or else his
spirit won't soar free."
"Another Indian rule? That's ridiculous. Stupid. How many who come see you can actually make that climb by
themselves?"
"True. Some can't manage the final one after climbing so many mountains by now."
The tea tasted bitterer than ever. Alise added a generous glob of honey and shoved the jar toward Susan,
who still stared at her. Waiting.
"The mountain plays its role in the spirit passage," Alise said. "For centuries it has completed the cycle for the
Mescalero and ancestor tribes, everything I described to you before. For people with enough resolve and
determination to accomplish that one, last ascension, the reward is unmatched. But if you drag your father up
there, you've broken the cycle with bad consequences for his spirit."
"With all due respect to the tribe's customs," Susan deliberately spaced out her words, "but this will finally be
over."
"It will. But no different than if you had...chosen one of those other alternatives."
"You won't help me then?"
"If you insist on doing this, pay the fee, complete the paperwork, I can't say no. Be certain, though, who I'm
helping here."
"I insist." She scooted her chair back. "Let me get my purse."
Susan rushed through the official forms, scribbling names, numbers and required personal information. She
passed them over along with an envelope stuffed with bills. As Alise thumbed through the ten 100 dollar
notes, she recited another of her tribal responsibilities.
"For the client service it performs, the tribe incurs certain fees. There are affidavits and death certificates to be
filed. Material and handling costs. Vehicle disposals. Obituary information to publish. Lawyers and the
government to pay. A portion of the money also goes into a trust. That trust funds a lobbying effort intended
to make the federal government institute a nationwide policy sanctioning and supporting assisted suicide."
She looked up. "Any questions?"
Susan took her first sip of tea. "None goes to you?"
Always the same question.
"I get a stipend. A living allowance that pays the bills and lets me do what I do for the tribe."
"Ah." Susan glanced around the spartan kitchen. "The tribe isn't one for expensing luxuries, are they?"
"Where would you prefer the money go? Do you have his birth certificate?"
Alise accepted and added the notarized paper to the mix before placing everything in the steel lockbox she
kept under the sink. Then she took out and sanitized a long silver needle in the stove's flickering blue flame.
Susan watched her every move and finished her tea, without once touching the honey jar.
They went back into the sitting room where Edmund remained as they'd left him. Dawn's cheery glow
streamed through the window, bathing his features in fiery oranges and reds. He greeted it like any statue
would: impassive and unmoved.
"I need a drop of his blood for the quilt," Alise extracted a single white thread and cloth swatches from her
sewing box and squatted by Edmund's side.
Susan frowned. "Why did you bother to..."
"In case a client changes their mind. Which does occasionally happen. Wouldn't want to cause an infection."
"Or a lawsuit."
Alise tucked one thread end into the corner of her mouth. She flipped over Edmund's hand and gently
extended his fleshy pinky. With a single thrust, she stabbed the tip.
The statue roared to life. Edmund jerked away and flailed his wounded hand as if it were ablaze.
"Take this." Alise shoved the needle back to Susan and snatched at Edmund's waving arm.
The needle struck again. "Ouch," Susan cried.
Alise corralled Edmund's arm long enough to draw the thread across the beads of bright crimson before she
yanked a swatch from her robe pocket and wrapped his finger.
"Hold this for him."
Susan knelt and did so. Smears of red coated one of her fingers.
"Did I do that?"
"It was me. Shhh, Daddy. It's okay now." Susan held firm to her father's hand and stroked his arm to soothe
him. "I've always been clumsy with needles. Can't sew a single stitch."
Alise handed her another swatch and went to the storeroom. Five minutes later, the blood-soaked thread lay
embedded in the quilt she selected for Edmund. She stitched a second thread alongside his, one soaked in
her own blood, thus properly completing the ritual requirement.
Not that it would matter for him.
In the sitting room, Susan's head nodded in approval at the choice of quilt. On it, a burly Native American
warrior confidently forded his way through a menacing forest in the glare of a sputtering torch. Numerous
glowing eyes and dark shapes surrounded him, but none offered any challenge.
Alise rolled up the quilt and tied it with jute. Then she described the short drive over to the trail head and the
winding path to the mountain top. Most victims needed the better part of a day to make the ascent to where
a great cleft rent one of the mountain's shoulders. To where the mouth of the chute waited.
"The burlap backing of the quilt faces down on the steel lining of the chute," Alise said. "Whenever you're
ready, just hold on to the edge of the quilt and tip yourself in. No need to run or push off."
Susan shook her head. "He won't be able to..."
"Here." Alise handed her several oversized silver safety pins. "Wrap him in the quilt and pin the sides
together. He won't have to hold on."
Susan stared at the pins. "I didn't think I'd be the only person with someone who couldn't...And...and they still
decide to go ahead with..."
"You're not and they do. It changes nothing, though."
"Changes?"
"His spirit. Consequences."
"Oh. That."
"Tribal custom says an individual is given life, the most personal gift possible, from the heart of the cosmos.
Only the individual can rightfully decide when to surrender it back."
"Surrender? Seems like another word would be better."
"Choose one, then. Something close."
"You believe this?"
"I..." Days wound back to a bittersweet moment 18 years earlier. When she had made her own choice.
"Yes, I do. Now."
"Good for you. I can't. Neither can Daddy." Susan gathered her purse. "I'm very sorry if the--cycle, you called
it?--gets ruined, but he's not Mescalero. So in his case, why should they care? What does it really matter?
Besides, you've got your money now, your trust, your...stipend."
"His death is still a ways off. It's not his time yet."
Susan's eyes flashed. "Who really determines that? What condition decides it, beyond any doubt? Arguments
have raged for decades and won't stop, even if Congress issues some ground-breaking policy. It won't
matter. People like my father will still get neglected or shortchanged or screwed. And, at the end of the day,
it'll still come down to an excruciating, very personal decision where you do what you absolutely have to do.
Whatever the reason or cost."
Susan laid a hand on her father's cheek. "I'll take him up that mountain. Wrap him like you said. Kiss him. Hold
him tight one last time. Then, send him on his way. When it's over, whatever comes next, he will be much
better off. That's the only thing that matters."
An impassioned speech, one Alise had heard numerous times--including once, years before, uttering from her
own lips.
Dust swirling in their wake, the Campbells backed down the drive and turned toward Singing Mountain. Many
hours passed until Alise felt the mountain's pull.
She went out onto the porch into the lingering heat where, moments later, a narrow speck emerged from a
protruding buttress set low on the mountain's westward flank. It arced lazily into the setting sun, tumbling in
a slow end-over-end motion. At its apex, the point when Alise expected a slight flare of sunlight, she held her
breath. The object tumbled on, bathed in the sun's steady glare, until it finally careened out of sight.
Exactly as she had feared.
Midstream of that final flight, Edmund Willis Campbell should have departed, his spirit drawn up in the
Mescalero way of rejoining the unbridled, creative force of the cosmos, leaving only an empty, spent carcass to
tumble back to the dust. But it wasn't to be.
"I'm so sorry." Alise watched the spot in the vast burial ground where he'd vanished.
As the sun slid behind the western plateaus, her dry lips pursed and blew a weak, feeble whistle--a pitiful
note unworthy of marking the end of any contest of significance. She tried again with the same result before
giving up.
Deep inside, the ache throbbed anew.
The mountain sang to her through the long night, a sorrowful lament sprinkled with wry overtones. Long ago,
Ulysses had described to her the mountain gaan residing within the barren peak, claiming it was an
unforgiving, overbearing task master and perfectionist. He also said it possessed an impish streak. Over 18
grueling years, Alise could not recall a single instance when her demanding partner seemed less than a
megalomaniac.
The week went on.
Tuesday brought to her doorstep a detestable man and his battered, near-invalid wife. Despite what she'd
told Susan Campbell, she refused to transact with him, certain she had no business abetting the culmination
of a long stint of abuse.
Briefly she felt in danger as the monster raged at her but he stormed off empty-handed, his tires screeching
on the road to the mountain. Alise phoned the license plate number to Junior and allowed herself a tiny hope
that the woman could be spared a horrible, premature death. That hope evaporated when the mountain's pull
came later.
On Wednesday, Odette Armstrong declared that she would forever be a crackhead, unable to properly care
for herself let alone her infant boy, Derrick. She was quite right, Alise saw. Odette's years of illicit narcotics
prior to and during pregnancy had afflicted tiny Derrick with numerous debilities, several of which would kill him
before two more birthdays passed. With a heart of icy lead, Alise made the necessary arrangements.
In the evening, she watched yet another bundle tumble to earth without any intervening flare of sunlight. As
the mountain song bubbled on the evening breeze, she prayed that Derrick at least found some peace and
that his mother would find infertility. Soon.
Gunther and Ted claimed to be at wits end when she opened the door Thursday morning. Both men solemnly
attested they wanted to be forever bound in death as a means of cementing their eternal bond. They paid,
signed, and she made the preparations feeling wooden, unable to contain her annoyance at two healthy men
anxious to abort the prime of their lives. But she didn't judge them. Oh no. That was not her place.
Only one object soared from the mountain later in the day. Some time afterwards, the sky blue Camry that
had sat in her driveway at daybreak sped by, a lone figure hunched over the wheel.
So much for utter devotion.
A parched wind gusted through the night. It diced the mountain's song into twisted chuckles. Alise smothered
her head under the pillow, but the sound permeated her dreams.
When the ruddy light of Friday greeted her along with a woman and her wheelchair-bound, diabetic mother,
Alise was ready for the joke to end. She much preferred the overbearing mountain gaan instead of the
obnoxious prankster.
It was hard to say what might drive her insane first, the now constantly throbbing pain in her chest or the
gaan's apparent amusement at her predicament. She knew neither could be endured much longer. That night,
Alise reached a difficult decision.
Saturday morning she wrote a paragraph of scrawl worthy of a doctor's prescription and stuffed it into an
envelope bearing Susan Campbell's address. Two weeks later, a blistering reply arrived. The follow-up letter
that Alise drafted brought Susan back to her doorstep.
"How dare you! I loved my father more than anything. Anything!"
"I know. I'm counting on that."
"Counting on what?"
"Your love for him to help me reach the end. My end."
They argued for a while at the kitchen table before Alise played her trump card.
"Everything you've done so far has been for your benefit. For you." When Susan's mouth flopped open in
denial, Alise rushed on. "That included research, selection, and ultimately you dragging him to see me. You
could have just as likely chosen a gun, a knife, poison, gas, or some other unsavory method to end his life, but
you brought him here. To the mountain and me: a legalized drive-through clinic dispensing the mercy kill you
hoped for. So do this thing. Now, it's for him."
Susan slumped back in the chair.
"What do you want of me?"
"Two things actually. I want the quilt he used, and I'm in no shape to scour the desert for it. That's where you
come in. On Friday, I'll go up the mountain and use that quilt for myself. When my spirit soars free, I'll take
your father's with me. Another of those Indian rules, you see, this time working in your favor. So stay and help
me get through the week, which includes handing Junior the lockbox in case I forget."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Then it's really over?"
"Then, I'm gone. You're on your own."
Susan frowned and grudgingly acquiesced.
Late the next afternoon she trudged in, the warrior quilt tucked under her arm, tear-streaked grime plastering
her face. She spoke no words. Explained nothing. Alise didn't ask what sights Susan encountered combing the
burial ground. She recalled in vivid detail her one-time experience 18 years ago.
Victims came every day that week. Alise helped them while Susan steadfastly assisted Alise without reluctance
or complaint. But Susan refused anything to do with quilting, claiming no interest or need.
Late Thursday night, Alise tore discolored strips out of the pair of blood-stained swatches leftover from the
day Edmund died. She used her largest needle to work them into the warrior quilt.
"I'm coming, Edmund," Alise told the warrior, who seemed more lost than before. "Your daughter's provided
for both of us."
The mountain's song that night was a lilting lullaby.
Next morning the two women stood together on the driveway waiting for the sunrise to bring Junior and his
truck. Alise snapped three large safety pins on one of her belt loops while Susan hugged the warrior quilt to
her chest.
"Don't want to worry about holding on," Alise said. "Much easier this way." She patted the pins.
"Right."
Nothing in the predawn chill betrayed the heat to come. Alise knew it would be another scorcher though.
"When's your flight?"
"Dinner. I'll pack after you go. Want me to lock up or anything?"
"No need."
"Who'll take your place here?"
"The mountain will see to that."
"Sooo... what if someone comes before I leave?"
"Tell them sorry. We're closed."
"But...." Susan squeezed the quilt. "But they could be like Daddy."
"Possibly."
"They could just go, couldn't they? Up to the chute."
"Sure. But that's a lot of trouble. And effort. And extra pain. Why not just pick up that rock over there and use
it? Quick and easy."
"That's not..." She shook her head. "Can't somebody else...? I mean, why couldn't Junior..."
"No. It's their problem. If you're feeling up to it, you could discuss alternatives with them. Compare notes.
Methods. Talk about the pros and cons. But that excruciating, personal decision has to be rethought now.
Time for a new choice."
"Until some day, when the mountain finally..."
"Until then."
Susan's gaze dropped. She dug a toe into the gravel and ground the dust.
A pair of headlights cruised up the highway and whipped into the drive. When Junior's truck skidded to a halt,
Susan tossed the quilt into the bed.
"Wait," she said and darted into the shack.
Alise climbed into the passenger seat and laid her head back on the filthy glass. It rapped her skull as the
idling engine sputtered.
"Are you up for this?" Though his face was granite, Junior sounded on the verge of tears.
"I hope so." She flashed him a weak smile. "It's a long, hard path."
"Which you've done before."
"18 years ago. When I was a younger woman." And less sick but a lot more foolish, she didn't add.
Susan returned, wearing a deeper scowl, and passed her the lockbox. Which reminded her...
"My form's on top," Alise told Junior as she set the box on the floorboard. "Birth certificate. Everything. I didn't
pay though."
"Deal's off then," Junior said. The engine choked. "On second thought, I think the tribe can probably afford it."
"Glad to hear it." Alise glanced back at Susan. "I hope your trip goes well."
"Yours too," she said, her voice croaking.
And then Susan Campbell fell behind, swallowed up by the same desert silence that blanketed the truck's cab
all the way to the trail head.
The engine rattled and died with the jingle of Junior's keychain. They sat and watched the growing glare
banish the last of the night murk.
"Junior, what will you do now? With your life?"
He nodded. "Been thinking about that. A lot."
He thought some more.
"Washington. I'm going to move there next year. Attend a university. Join the tribal lobby, the one funded by
your work."
He stared at her. His eyes twinkled.
"No, Junior. Don't. Don't look up to me. I'm not worth it."
"Wrong."
"You can't possibly understand what I..."
"My great grandfather says there are as many shepherds and their ways of tending spirits--both living and
dead--as there are stars in the sky. So how can any one way be more right than the other?"
He shook his head and glanced at the mountain.
"All I know is...our way asks too much. Things have to be better, made easier, so people aren't forced to this."
His fingers traced puckered splits in the steering wheel cover. "You're not of my people. Not of our customs.
But I hope I have your commitment and dedication, Alise. What you've shown for our way to all those
desperate people for all these years."
"Your great grandfather would know, more than anyone." She could hear Ulysses' timbre driving every word
he said. "You can do it, Junior. Nobody's better suited."
He nodded again.
Hours into her trudge up the path, the truck still sat at the trail head. Were she to misstep, twist her ankle or
tumble, Junior would be there, no doubt. He would help and care for her, like a devoted son she didn't
deserve.
But she mustn't falter. Not now.
The throb felt like a football lodged within her chest, filling, expanding. Alise pressed on into lengthening
shadows until she stood panting at the mouth of the chute.
Alone this time.
Or not.
A throaty coo coo on her left announced company. She locked eyes with a roadrunner, near invisible in his
speckled brown backpack. With a mousetrap head snap, the bird plucked a scorpion from its cubby hole and
began wolfing down the squirming form.
"Guess it is dinner time, huh?"
The segmented tail vanished last, its stinger slapping uselessly against the triangular beak.
Harsh and rugged.
The desert endured, even if she could not.
"You go right ahead. I think I'll just skip the whole last meal part."
Ambient light penetrated only a short distance into the chute opening. It sloped gently away at the start and
then plunged into near free fall before swooping back to a slight incline. Somewhere far below, sunlight from
the western opening penetrated, likely to maximum depth about this time of day, welcoming quilt and rider
into a fiery embrace as they shot from the mountain to soar skyward.
"Might as well get this over with."
Alise draped the quilt across the chute's pocked-marked steel lip. She crawled onto it feet first, the orientation
she chose for the ride, wrapped it around her, and pinned the sides together from bottom to top. Snug in her
cocoon, she wiggled forward inch-by-inch until gravity did its job.
The hurtling plunge that followed happened so abruptly and with such shock from her sensory-deprived state
that, thankfully, no new agonies registered on her already tormented body.
She fell, near weightless. It went on and on, a drop into forever.
Somewhere along the way, Alise let go.
She felt herself drawn upward, soaring like a bird of prey riding a hurricane's updraft.
Blackness yielded to brilliance without references, except for one fleeting instant when another presence
registered alongside her, a confident, powerful essence that somehow touched her with a solitary note of
deep appreciation and then was gone.
She'd done it.
"Allliiise."
Alone, she drifted in a milky void without form or substance. No temperature, pressure, motion, or feeling
assailed her. Only light.
"Allliiise."
And sound?
Not a true sound. A pull. A very familiar call from something that should be far behind by now.
"Allliiise."
Motion came. She complied with the summons, like a trout fly drawn across a placid stream back to the rod. To
the source of its flight.
"Alise!"
Stone surrounded her. What should have been the densest rock seemed porous, diffused with dappled light.
"Where am I?" she said.
"The Mescalero name translates to Death's Mouth," came a subdued but familiar voice. "Most prefer calling it
Singing Mountain."
"Singing Mountain?" That couldn't be right. "I left the mountain. I...died."
"You left the bounds of flesh and soared free. Briefly. With a worthy companion, I should add."
"Edmund?"
"So he was named."
Then she truly had accomplished everything.
But nagging questions remained.
"Who are you?"
"The gaan Ulysses chants to. Keeper of the Passage to the Constellations. Preserver of timeless ways of
primordial creation. Singer of lullabies." The voice chuckled. "Ask your next question."
"Why am I here?"
"Because it amused me."
Confusion turned to dismay. "Amused?"
"Yes, Alise. You'll see. To be in close proximity to the darkness, as Ulysses calls it, is to court its touch. I kept
the darkness at bay in you for 18 years."
"You kept...But...but why?"
"A chance for you to understand and appreciate. Which you did not want. Remember?"
She did. Dismay became alarm.
"You wanted a husband, but not the babe you made to snare him. Especially not when that child arrived with
physical defects and great needs. What did you do then, Alise?"
"Pleeease."
"Just like Susan Campbell did, wasn't it?"
She moaned. "No. Worse than."
"A young life compared to old... is that what you mean? Well, perhaps. If mere mortal time is the measure. In
the end, when that time is up, the result is the same though, isn't it?"
No comparison. Never would be. Not for her.
"How did you know to set the binding, Alise? You added Susan's blood to the quilt."
"I...I just thought..."
"You hoped someday she might come to appreciate her action, didn't you? Just as you came to finally
understand, appreciate, and devote to the path you selfishly chose at first. Chose and violated."
"I was wrong. I learned."
"So will she, in time. And she will return to Death's Mouth. Permanently."
"W-will you arrange that?"
"No, Alise. You will."
"Me?"
"As I did for you. Beginning the day I climbed this mountain with your babe's quilt, threaded with his, mine,
and your own blood. I, too, soared up to the Passage, only to be halted, called back to learn what you now
know. To feel as you now do."
"Feel how?"
"Trapped. Yet again. All very amusing, wouldn't you say?"
"This whole time, then, after my baby... ou've been..."
"I guided your hands and sustained your body. You guided your heart and, at long last, finally enlightened
your spirit to the true responsibility of the choice you made. So now it's your turn to open the Passage when
the Mescalero chants swell. Let through the faithful ones who've soared free so they can meld back into the
heart of creation with its infinite possibilities. Preserve the cycle, Alise. As before. One day you, too, can follow,
when your replacement arrives here. Until then, I recommend singing to her. Often."
Later, the Mescalero chant soared. The mountain trembled with power. Or maybe it was just Alise rumbling as
she surged into the recently vacated space within the highest crags of stone. There, she flicked open the
Passage to the Constellations for the worthy ones and watched familiar essences surge through; their giddy
delight prompted pangs of envy, surprising Alise that she could still feel.
She then hurled her song eastward along the blood bond, eventually to blend and rattle with raindrops on the
windows of a small house. Inside sat Susan Campbell, who wondered what dark recess had spawned the
storm's mournful voice as she flipped open the crisp cover of a new book on quilting and read.
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"Todd Thorne resides in the Piney Woods of East Texas with his wife and
two technophile sons. He's come to expect and appreciate labels of 'dark and
gritty' as pertains to his writing and he feels the space-time continuum must
grind to a halt the day he writes a lighthearted, cozy yarn. His speculative
fiction has appeared in Allegory, Electric Spec, Fusion Fragment, The Future
Fire, and Thaumatrope."
Visit his website at: http://www.toddthorne.com
two technophile sons. He's come to expect and appreciate labels of 'dark and
gritty' as pertains to his writing and he feels the space-time continuum must
grind to a halt the day he writes a lighthearted, cozy yarn. His speculative
fiction has appeared in Allegory, Electric Spec, Fusion Fragment, The Future
Fire, and Thaumatrope."
Visit his website at: http://www.toddthorne.com
