Contemporary Sorcery

Sam Nolting

Tibet, 1971

Midday was as dim as dusk, but it did not rain; the sky held the clouds to its jealous breast. The cold of fall-becoming-winter bit through Sangye's shawl as she stepped off the bus. She worried for the baby. Her belly was swollen and everyone she met assured her the birth would come soon. Sangye was ready, for certain. She was tired of the constant weight, the unseen hands tethering her, preventing her from jumping or dancing as she once had. She was tired now, and sick, and would have been in bed save for worship today. With a wheezing heave the bus trundled past. Inside Sangye saw the sullen face of a soldier, staring blankly out. She dropped her eyes when they met his. When the bus had passed, Sangye crossed the street, holding her breath at the diesel fumes.

It was a short walk to the temple, but Sangye felt cold and scared without her husband, who had to stay at their small farm to tend the animals (the farm would be absorbed into one of the new communes soon, she knew, but Sangye refused to consider it). She murmured the mantra of Tara, hoping for a little piece of her compassion. Sangye's husband hadn't wanted her to come today, had said she was sick and very pregnant, but she had insisted. At the gate she spun the prayer wheel, but it failed to quiet her mind. Her breath came harsh as she walked the path to the temple doors.

Inside it was better. The closing door cut out the rumble of the city's machines as they worried at the quiet, and hid the heavy gloom of the clouds. The lights and sounds and smells here were the same as always, as before the occupation. On one wall was a large window, from floor to low ceiling, facing the temple's small garden. Sangye sat down slowly, on a pillow, forgoing an attempt at lotus position. The room was mostly empty; a lama sat against the wall, drawn into himself. Sangye looked at him, respectful though part of her was very glad that her boy would not be taken from her to be raised a monk, not anymore. It was safer here now, though sometimes a little sad.

Finally she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, steadied herself. Sangye evened her breathing, murmuring Tara's mantra, om tare tuttare ture svaha, feeling without feeling her thoughts slide away. Om tare tuttare ture svaha...the world pressed in more softly...om tare tuttare ture svaha...she was no longer Sangye, not a woman but a wisp of thought, then nothing.

Om tare

Something changed and there was a rushing in her head, as of air from a balloon --

tuttare ture

The rushing grew and grew until it was a waterfall, not of sound or thought but simple sensation, pouring out of her and drowning out --

svaha

everything and then a pop, and with that Sangye's eyes flew open and outside the window she saw the rain begin to fall, and she recognized the pains of labor.

Sangye struggled to her feet. The rain was coming down hard and it was as if she felt it on her skin, sluicing across her face and breasts, cold and prickling like ice, waking her from sleep. The next contraction hit and she doubled over with a grunt. A man stood, awoken from his reverie, and said something, stretching out his hand. Sangye stared at it but did not respond; his words fell together between them like a child's toppled blocks. Outside the window there was rain, falling in grey waves on the leaves of garden trees, and still it was on her skin, beading like dew. She doubled over again as the man leaned in, grasping at her. Sangye wheeled away, evading the hand, stumbling over her pillow, coming to a wobbling halt. The window filled a corner of her vision, vast and clear, shining with the cool damp light of afternoon storms, and as the man with the reaching hands stepped closer, Sangye turned to the window and lurched forward, her feet leaving the polished wood floor, her face turned up to the clouds and the rain spiraling down from the leaden sky.

She never felt the glass.

Chapter I - Unbinding

I might have died an old man.

I might have lived my life in peace. Restless, unfulfilled, blind -- but peace.

I might never have left the States. Hell, I might never've left California.

I could have been a butcher. A baker. A -- well, okay, candlesticks aren't exactly in demand these days. I could've been an investment banker. "A butcher, a baker, an investment banker" -- kinda got a ring to it, doesn't it?

Anyway. I could've been a lot of things. I could've done a lot of things -- not enough, though. It would never have been enough. I know that, and despite everything, despite all life's put me through, I know I did the only thing I could've. Even now, I know that. Even now, sitting here grounded again, waiting for the Reaper. I made my choice. And it was a good one.

Opportunity knocked. I had one chance, and I took it, and I'm glad.

My name's Jacob Saulk. No relation to Jonas. He discovered polio. Or did he cure polio? Well, whatever polio-related thing he did, he was a good sort of guy. I was just a teenage bum.

I was eighteen. It was summer; the summer after high school, before college. Well, I say "before college," but I'd goofed off too much, cut too many classes for that. 'Course, my opinion was "Why go to college?" I knew I could catch some dead-end job and eke out a living somehow. Video store clerk, burger flipper, janitor-in-chief. I wouldn't bother anybody. I wasn't too interested in money. I just wanted to -- well, I didn't know quite what it was I wanted to do, but I do know that I wanted to do something, and it wasn't school, not by a long shot. Of course Mom didn't see it that way. I was going to college, like it or not. I'll bet she just wanted to make sure I didn't show up broke and hungry on her doorstep late some night, demanding free room and board for the next ten years. She was certainly sick of doing laundry, I knew that.

So she yelled at me about my grades, tossed me book after book on improving my SAT scores and my study skills and this and that and so on and on and on. Jacob Saulk, you will make something of yourself if it kills me. I knew she wanted me to do everything, but she would settle, she said, for me doing anything. She was a cultural anthropologist. She worked at the museum, setting up exhibits for grade-schoolers who never listened, only giggled at the caveman penises.

She set up an appointment for me with my counselor, once, in late freshman year. I walked into the woman's office, sat down, and waited. She looked at me, asked some stupid questions. Finally she let out a tiny, exasperated sigh, and said, "Well, Jacob, what are your interests?"

That brought me up short. I sat for a little while, thinking. I liked walking, and reading, and looking around, and sitting and thinking, and high places, and wind in my hair, and laughing at nothing, and travel (though I hadn't, save in books), and walruses.

"Dunno," I said. After she didn't say anything I got up and left. The counselor didn't bother with me after that. But that was a long time ago, years before the time I'm thinking of.

Like I said: summer. Late June, if I remember correctly. Maybe early July. Sometime early in the season, when the sun was bright and worries about school seemed incredibly distant. It was time to kick back and stop caring. That was the kind of time I liked.

I was supposed to pick up some groceries for Mom; she was at the museum that day, setting up the latest exhibition, New Zealander mythology, what was it called, Maori? Maori culture. Lots of carved-wood statues of bugeyed gods, a bunch of hollowed-out boats. It was neat really -- I might have enjoyed the museum, if only there was some way to keep all the idiots out.

I picked up the list on the kitchen table. Milk, eggs, Cheerios. Fine by me. I left my nasty little cookie-cutter home and started out toward the store, about a ten-minute walk. I walk fast, even in the asphalt heat of a Fresno summer.

I turned off my cul-de-sac and onto the street with a Spanish name and the same four paint schemes and house floorplans as my own street. In my youth I'd always pictured a sack full of coal at the end of cul-de-sacs, like the treasure of some especially shitty leprechaun; I'd spent ages searching but never found it.

Next left, two blocks of Levittown and then a right, past a little bit of park and now a jog to the left to bypass the Baptist church that cut off this street.

Hm. I stopped before the jog, eyeing the church, a big blocky building, constructed on the glory-to-God-through-volume-and-central-air principle. It wasn't Sunday and it was early afternoon; the parking lot was nearly empty. I wondered if I could hop the stone wall behind the church and shave a minute off my walk. I trotted into the parking lot, went round the right-hand side. Here was just more parking lot, and it looked like the building backed directly onto the wall behind it.

When I reached the twelve-foot wall, too tall to jump, I saw that there was actually a five-foot gap between the church and the back wall. I peered down the shadowed gap. On the other side the sunlight streamed against the sheer wall, and beside it sat a big green Dumpster. I grinned; I could hop on top of the Dumpster and scramble onto the wall from there. Not really much of a time savings, but a lot more fun than the usual route.

As I stepped into the gap a breeze rushed at me, stale and cool, and goosebumps rose on my arms from the sudden chill. I walked toward the far side, glass crunching under my feet -- clearly some of my peer group used this as an evening hangout. I was a behind-the-Safeway man myself, but to each his own.

I reflected that the church was damn big. Baptists like their elbow room, I guess. This wasn't turning out to be much of a shortcut after all.

It was darkening, as if the sun, already obscured by the building and wall, had given up and gone behind a cloud. And I fancied a smell was issuing from the Dumpster on the other side -- a smell like wet dead leaves and sour milk and scorch. Like the way a faerie bonfire would smell, I thought, the morning after, when all the faeries were passed out drunk and the fire had dwindled to nothing, just stinking ash, all wrapped up in old food-smells and fresh grass and dew. But funny thing, the green hulk looked no closer than before.

And when I looked back the sun-baked asphalt was a distant point.

I stopped. I looked up -- the church wall rose above me, stucco, and on the other side, the wall, too high and sheer to climb, and beyond them, deep blue sky. I looked down -- and realized the ground wasn't asphalt here, or concrete. It was hard-packed gray-black dirt, and I couldn't for the life of me remember whether it had been that way the whole time.

I had a T-shirt and shorts, twenty dollars in my pocket, and I'd left my pocketknife -- and my mother, and my friends -- at home.

I looked back again, at the dwindling point of sunlight -- easily a football field away. I looked forward, at the Dumpster not forty feet off. And I felt a grin boiling up inside me, a hysteric joy that quivered my fingers and toes.

I know exactly what this is.

Oh hell yes.

I took off running.

And that is Chapter One. I may actually post Chapter Two, if I decide I love you enough -- to read all (thirteen or so?) chapters I have finished so far, drop me a review or a line at thurberesque at gmail dot com.