Flight: A Novel Read online

  My father tosses the kid to the ground and steps on him. Holds him down. Then my father takes the long knife out of his belt and hands it to me.

  I see the knife is the broken end of a cavalry bayonet. The handle is a thick wrap of beaded buckskin.

  My father says something to me in his language. I don’t understand.

  He says the same thing again. I still don’t understand.

  He points at me, at my throat. I reach up and touch the huge scar on my neck.

  And then I remember: A white soldier cut my throat. In another camp on a different river, a white soldier grabbed my hair, lifted my chin, and slashed my throat with a bayonet. And now my father wants revenge. He wants me to want revenge.

  I remember, back when I was Zits, back when I was eight years old, and I was living in this foster home on a mountain near Seattle. A rich white family. I thought their money made me rich, too. They bought me new shoes. It was the first time I ever wore new shoes.

  I remember I’d been living there for a week, with my new brother and new sister and new mother, when my new father took me into the basement to show me his model trains. He had miles and miles of railroad track down there. Thousands of miles and hundreds of trains. He had built cities and towns and mountains and forests.

  I remember I played with those trains for hours and hours. Played until I could barely keep my eyes open. Then my new father took me into another dark room in the basement, one without any trains, and did evil things to me. Things that hurt. Things that made me bleed.

  I stare at the white kid, the soldier, lying on the ground of Little Bighorn. I stare at the bayonet in my hand.

  I stare at my Indian father. I notice that he has little hands war-painted on his chest, children’s hands. I wonder if he paints himself that way to remember the Indian children who have been destroyed by white soldiers.

  I stare at the white soldier again.

  I wonder what I would do now if that model-train man were lying on the grass here at Little Bighorn. Would I kill him? Would I take revenge on him for what he did to me in the dark basement room?

  I don’t know.

  All around me, Indian men, women, and children watch me. They all want revenge. They all want me to want revenge.

  The other white soldiers, bloody and broken, watch me. They know they are going to die and they weep. They want to live.

  Yes, they are soldiers. They are killers. And they want to live.

  We all want to live. I don’t know what to do.

  I feel the anger building inside of me. I feel the need for revenge. Maybe I’m only feeling the old-time Indian kid’s need for revenge. Or maybe I’m only feeling my need for revenge. Maybe I’m feeling both needs for revenge.

  And then I wonder if that’s the reason I killed all the people in the bank.

  Did I want revenge? Did I blame those strangers for my loneliness? Did they deserve to die because of my loneliness?

  Does this little white soldier deserve to die because one of his fellow soldiers slashed my throat?

  If I kill him, do I deserve to be killed by this white soldier’s family and friends?

  Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?

  I look away from the white kid’s eyes. I look across the distance and see Crazy Horse astride a pony on another hill. He’s alone. He’s always alone.

  He watches us. He is not participating. Yes, he killed dozens of soldiers during this fight. And he killed Custer. But then he rode away to watch the rest of it. Alone.

  I remember that he always camped alone. That he often left his people and traveled into the wilderness. I remember that he went missing for weeks and months at a time. Nobody knew where he went.

  And now I watch him ride over the hill and disappear.

  Soon, he will be killed. Not by a bullet. According to legend, Crazy Horse was bulletproof. Crazy Horse will be murdered by one of his old friends: by Little Big Man.

  Another Indian warrior will betray Crazy Horse. Little Big Man will hold Crazy Horse’s arms as a white soldier punches a bayonet into the strange one’s belly.

  A bayonet will kill Crazy Horse. Like the bayonet in my hand.

  My father yells at me in his language. He wants me to be a warrior.

  I’m only twelve or thirteen. This body is only twelve or thirteen. I am only a child.

  I stare at the white soldier in front of me. He’s probably eighteen. Or younger. He’s seventeen or sixteen or fifteen. He’s a child and I’m a child and I’m supposed to slash his throat.

  What do I do?

  I close my eyes.

  Ten

  I OPEN MY EYES to reveille. Somebody blares away on his trumpet. No, a bugle. The military uses a bugle. What is the difference between a trumpet and a bugle? I try to picture a bugle in my mind. And a trumpet.

  The bugle doesn’t have valves or keys. The bugle is a naked trumpet. I wonder who plays that bugle.

  I get out of bed. No, it’s a cot. And I realize I’m in a tent, with maybe ten or twelve other cots. But they’re all empty. I’m alone here.

  I can hear people running and yelling outside the tent.

  Oh, yeah, that’s reveille. That means it’s morning. Everybody must be up getting breakfast or getting ready to fight. I guess I must be a soldier now. I wonder which war I’m going to be fighting.

  I wonder who I might have to kill now. I want this to stop. But what can I do? There must be some way to escape. I have to make something happen. So I walk outside the tent.

  One hundred U.S. Cavalry soldiers are rushing around. These are old-time soldiers, nineteenth or eighteenth century, like the soldiers at the Little Bighorn, I think. Jesus, I hope this isn’t Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.

  I need a mirror. I want to look at my reflection to see who I am this time. But then I notice that the other soldiers are looking at me. Some are laughing and pointing. Then all of them are laughing and pointing.

  There’s something wrong. With me.

  I look at myself: I am naked as a bugle.

  I guess this guy likes to sleep naked.

  I’m embarrassed but also relieved. I am not that kid soldier. Nope. I am an old man, skinny and wrinkly. That’s bad enough, but you know what’s worse? My pubic hair is gray.

  So, okay, I suddenly realize I’ve been staring at my nakedness for way too long. I look up to see the soldiers laughing even harder at me. So I dash back into my tent. Well, I go as fast as I can. I limp, really. But I limp fast, damn it. I notice that my body is not too responsive to my commands. My legs hurt, especially my knees. I bet I have arthritis; old people get that disease, and I’m old.

  So I limp to my cot and look for clothes, my uniform. I find it. I guess it’s my uniform. It seems to be my size. I sniff it. It smells like the old man I am now. I try to put the thing on, but it has snaps and buttons and suspenders and belts I don’t understand. And my fingers don’t work too well. I have to concentrate on making them work right. And they hurt. It’s like little knives stabbing my knuckles.

  Then I remember that God is really, really old. So maybe God has God arthritis. And maybe that’s why the world sucks. Maybe God’s hands and fingers don’t work as well as they used to.

  Maybe God looks down on earth and sees the bad guys and tries to pick them up. Maybe he wants to squish them like bugs. But God’s arthritis is so bad he can’t make his fingers work.

  Maybe God saw me pull out my guns in the bank and tried to reach down and squish me before I could kill anybody. But God’s hands were too slow. He got me, but only after I shot a bunch of people.

  I’m ashamed of myself. Who was I? Well, I was me. I don’t have any excuses. I shot people. That’s all I can say. I deserve whatever punishment comes my way.

  But no punishment will be big enough. My punishment will not bring back the dead. It doesn’t work that way.

  I will be punished and the dead will stay dead. And the world will keep going on like that.

  Fru
strated, I keep losing my grip as I try to button my uniform. I am late for reveille. And I’m sure it’s bad to be late for reveille.

  So, okay, now I’m dressed and I limp out of the tent to join the other soldiers. Everybody else is already lined up in neat rows—or semi-neat rows, I guess. All of these soldiers are young and hungry. I wonder how long they’ve been on the march. They’re not starving to death, but they look hollow-eyed and barren, like they’ve been fed just enough food but never enough happiness.

  But why am I so worried about their happiness? About their loneliness? I know I’m going to get my ass kicked if I can’t figure out where I belong in this formation. But I don’t see a sign that says OLD-FART SOLDIERS BELONG HERE.

  “Gus!”

  I hear somebody shout that name but I don’t connect to it, so I keep walking up and down the rows of young soldiers, looking for my place. I’m about to shove some kid aside and take his place in line. I already hate these little shits. They’re still laughing and insulting me with quiet voices. They snicker.

  Are soldiers allowed to snicker? I thought military training gets rid of snickering.

  This feels like a nomadic high school in the middle of the Old West. These guys are soldiers, sure, and they might be good soldiers. But they’re still just kids, cruel and impulsive.

  It reminds me of the time when I was twelve years old, and this rich Seattle dude decided to start a charity for disadvantaged youth. He was going to take us homeless and pointless kids on “educational journeys” all over the world.

  The rich guy’s motto: “How can you be a part of the world if you haven’t seen the world?”

  My motto: “I don’t need to see the world in order to know the world is filled with homeless and pointless kids.”

  Each day, worldwide, twelve thousand children starve to death. That is fucked up.

  So, anyway, this rich guy picked twelve of us Seattle kids and we went to New York City. It was fun, I guess. We stayed in a fancy hotel and went to museums and Broadway plays and the Statue of Liberty. But it was at Newark Airport where I received a real education.

  At the baggage claim, I saw a bunch of army soldiers waiting for their baggage. Three or four soldiers grabbed another soldier’s bag and played keep-away with it. They were all dressed in their best uniforms with all their little medals and ribbons, and they were playing keep-away from this nerd soldier, who was wearing thick black army glasses and had big old army-nerd zits on his face. His zits were worse than mine.

  Yeah, sure, these guys were serving their country, and a few of them might become big-time heroes, but they were just kids, all eighteen or nineteen years old: immature and goofy and mean and acne-scarred and funny and stupid and silly and unsure about everything.

  And these are the children we send to fight our wars. I’m the child that Justice sent to war. And all of us children fight to defend adults. Doesn’t that seem backward?

  “Gus! You deaf dusty bastard! Get up here!”

  Somebody is yelling at me. I guess my name is Gus. Stupid name, really. But who am I to judge? I’m a time-traveling mass murderer and my name is Zits.

  “Gus!” the guy shouts again. He’s a little general dude with a mustache that probably weighs more than he does. “Have you gone mad? Please, sir, get up here now.”

  “All right, all right,” I say, and I notice that I’m speaking with this weird accent, like I’m Irish or something. Maybe I am finally Irish. Gus doesn’t sound like an Irish name, but Zits isn’t exactly a highly sacred Indian name, either.

  “Okay, troops,” General Mustache shouts to the assembled children, “I want you to meet Augustus Sullivan. You can call him Gus. He’s the best Indian tracker in the entire U.S. Army.”

  Oh, shit! I’m in the body of a guy who hunts Indians. God is definitely one funny deity-dude.

  “I want you all to take a good hard look at Gus,” General Mustache says. “He’s an old man, and you might think he’s weak and useless, but this is the bravest, strongest man I have ever known. I have fought alongside him for twenty years. I believe in him. I trust him. I would follow him anywhere.”

  I guess I am some kind of hero.

  “Two months ago, in Kansas,” General Mustache continues, “a group of settlers was attacked by wild Indians. They were all slaughtered: men, women, and children. Whole families. Those savages murdered twenty-five Christian folks. And Gus here, all on his own, went looking for the Indians who did it. And he found their camp on the Colorado River and he’s going to lead us there. And we are going to deliver unto them the swift and deadly blow of justice.”

  Okay, so this is not good. I am supposed to lead one hundred white soldiers into an Indian village.

  I can’t do it.

  I’m in control of Gus now so I’m just going to lead all these soldiers away from the Indian village. That might be a little difficult, I suppose, since I have no idea where the village is. I don’t even know north from south. But my lack of direction will probably be a good thing. I don’t need to get lost on purpose.

  So that’s my plan. I’m just going to get on my horse, point it in a random direction, and get very, very lost.

  Of course, when you’re a time-traveling mass murderer, you can’t really expect things to work out as planned. If there are rules for time travelers, I don’t know them.

  But things are not just happening. None of this is random.

  You see, I try to get lost. I try to lead the soldiers astray. But it doesn’t work that way.

  Some part of the old Gus remains inside of me. I still have Gus’s abilities. Whenever I zig, Gus makes me zag and so, zigzagging through the trees and grass and hills, we make our way toward the Indian camp. And even though I keep thinking, I want to be lost, I want to be lost, I want to be lost, I can’t do it. Gus won’t let me. What it comes to is this: I can’t completely control Gus. I can move his arms and legs. I can talk with his voice. And I can think my own thoughts. But Gus is stronger than I am. His memories become my memories, too. This is new. I couldn’t see into the past of the other bodies I’ve inhabited. I’m scared that Gus might reclaim his body and drown me in his blood.

  And so here we are on the ridge above the Indian camp. The sun is hot over the hills. And Gus remembers—and I remember—what he saw when he came upon those slaughtered white settlers.

  Dead white bodies stripped naked and mutilated and ruined.

  There was the body of a little girl, blond, blue-eyed, pretty even in death. She was still wearing her little blue gingham dress. She was the only person still wearing her clothes. The Indians had shown her that much respect: They murdered her, but they didn’t strip her naked. They let her die as an innocent.

  Three arrows in her stomach. She was still clutching a rag doll.

  Gus’s eyes water at the memory. My eyes water.

  I weep on the ridge above the Indian camp. I stare with watery vision down on the camp where that little girl’s murderers are sleeping and eating and laughing and telling stories and having sex and dancing and singing.

  It’s Indians down there. And I’m an Indian. But we’re not all the same kind of Indians, are we?

  No, those Indians down there killed a little girl. Shot three arrows into her belly and left her to die. And two feet away from that little girl’s body lay the naked body of a woman. Three arrows in her belly, too. A blond and blue-eyed woman, bloody and violated, her right hand forever reaching out toward the little girl.

  Yes, the girl’s mother, as she was dying, crawled across the grass toward her dying daughter and didn’t make it.

  The mother died two feet away from her daughter. Separated. They are cursed to be ghost mother and ghost daughter and will wander the grassy plains in the endless search for each other.

  These are not my thoughts. This is not my sadness. This all belongs to Gus, and his grief and rage are huge, so my grief and rage are huge, too, and I scream as I lead one hundred soldiers down the hill into the Indian camp.
/>   Eleven

  THIS IS WHAT REVENGE can do to you.

  I lead those one hundred soldiers down the hill toward the Indian camp.

  We are killers.

  As we ride to the bottom of the hill and race the short distance across the flats toward camp, I can feel Gus’s rage and grief leaving my body. With each hoof-beat, I lose pieces of my rage, until I am left with only my fear.

  I had wanted to kill, but now I just want to stop.

  I throw away my rifle. I don’t want to use it. But I keep riding. I am unarmed. I think I want to die. I think I want Gus to die.

  I think I want to lose this fight.

  We didn’t really surprise the Indians with our attack. We didn’t even try to sneak up on them. We wanted them to know we were coming. And so, yes, they knew we were coming, and they’re ready.

  But only twenty-five Indian warriors ride out to meet us. Most of them are boys. And only a few of them have rifles.

  The rest have bows and arrows. And, sure, they’re accurate. I see one soldier get hit in the chest with an arrow and another get hit in the stomach.

  But we have repeating rifles.

  It’s one hundred repeating rifles versus seven rifles and eighteen bows.

  We only lose a few men as we roar toward the Indian warriors. They are screaming and crying. They must prevent us from reaching their camp. If we reach it, we will kill old people, women, and children. We will destroy families. But the warriors can’t stop us. They are riding to their deaths. And they are singing their death songs.

  Most of them fall before we’re even close to them. One hundred rifles equals one hundred bullets every three seconds. In the twenty-one seconds it takes us to close the distance, we shoot seven hundred bullets.

  Only a few of the warriors survive that crash of bullets.

  And then we swarm into them. Ninety-five surviving white soldiers attack eleven Indian warriors. We barely pause as we kill all of them, with bullet and fist and saber and boot.

  I don’t kill anybody. But I ride with killers, so that makes me a killer.