Soul Loss Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “I may have to finally go through with it. But not by talking. Jill says I have to stop going to AA with everybody just talking, and start feeling. Feeling all that bad stuff. She says if I do that, I’ll have this crisis, and then I’ll come out different. She says I have spirits that want to talk through me.”

  “Really? Spirits?” Jamie stuffed a large cherry tomato into his mouth. Seeds popped out as he bit into it, spraying Kandy. “Sorry. Just shoot me. Jesus.” He blotted her hand with his napkin. “You said Jill. Jill Betts?”

  “Uh-huh. You’ve heard of her?”

  “Dad mentioned her. Said she’s not very good.” At Kandy’s hurt look, Jamie gestured an erasure and then took her hand in both of his. They still wore the rings. “Sorry. You think she is?”

  “I do. You should come with me next week.”

  Chapter Twenty

  This time, Mae didn’t try to stop when the tunnel took her again. The new vision opened in a hotel ballroom, empty of furniture and full of people. Barefoot or in socks, they shuffled to a monotonous beat, moving in concentric circles around Jill, who stood with her eyes half-closed, cradling a drum and thumping it with a leather-headed drumstick. She wore what seemed to be her trademark look—tight jeans, a fitted Western shirt, and an abundance of Indian jewelry.

  “Let the drum transport you,” she intoned with a trace of a New England accent. “Let yourselves lose the mask of civilization.”

  A few participants began jogging rather than shuffling. Some looked toward Jill as if waiting for a cue. Others watched their feet. Kandy faced the center, moving in a delicate side-step, meditative rather than awkward and self-conscious like the others. Jamie walked, ignoring the beat and wearing an exasperated grimace. His fingers wriggled in restless fists, occasionally tapping against his thighs. Jill urged the group again with the same words, and her steady drumming grew louder.

  After a hesitant glance at the contemplative Kandy, Jamie let out a high-pitched ow-whoo and began to dance and spin. Emitting a variety of ear-splitting animal sounds, he wove in and out among the startled shufflers. One by one, they lit up and began to leap and hop when he passed. Soon they all joined him in howling like wolves, yipping like coyotes, cawing like crows and croaking like ravens. All but Kandy.

  Still in what looked like a trance, Jill sped up the beat. Jamie dodged out of the circle and paced silently around it, watching the madness he’d begun. If his expression could be read as something he’d typically say, it might be, Fuck me dead, will you look at this crap?

  When the drum stopped, everyone sat on the floor in a congested circle and Jill chose a place between Jamie and Kandy. Jamie squirmed like a ten-year-old stuck in school on a nice day. Kandy gave him a scolding look and then gave her full attention to Jill.

  “It’s good to see that the wild lives in us.” Jill cast a beatific gaze around the group. They beamed back at her, glowing and sweating. “This promises to be an eventful weekend. Based on what I just heard, I hardly need remind you to welcome the divine madness.” She turned off her smile. “Remember that we have two paths. One: the path of the artist. Create your way to the upper and the lower worlds, find your guides, and come back to your starting place. Two: the path of crisis and emergence. If you feel its power coming, let go and allow the spirit world to take you.” She nodded toward Kandy and Jamie. “If your culture and your roots lead you to the emergence path, trust it.”

  Jamie’s eyes narrowed, and his upper lip drew back, but his recoil went unnoticed. Jill had already turned her regard back to her circle of students.

  “We’ll break for lunch now,” she said. “See you here in an hour.” They began to disperse. She spoke to Jamie as he hurried Kandy away. “Rainbow’s friend?” He stopped and did a dramatized slow-motion pivot. Jill extended her hand. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m sure you’re new. I’d remember that face and that energy. Welcome.”

  Jamie shook Jill’s hand briefly, nodded, and started to leave again, his hand on Kandy’s upper back. “Want to eat here, then? They have good tucker?”

  Jill called after him. “Australian?”

  Once more, he stopped and made the reluctant turn. “Yeah.”

  “Any chance you’re Stan Ellerbee’s son?”

  “Jesus. You think every half-caste Aussie blackfella is his kid? Come on, there’s at least fifty of us running around. Kandy, you ready?”

  Kandy stood on tiptoe and whispered to Jamie. He turned to Jill one more time. “She says I was rude. Sorry. Parents raised me better. Yeah, Jamie Ellerbee. Gotta run. I’m so hungry I could eat the arse end out of a low-flying duck. Catcha.”

  He steered Kandy out of the ballroom, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Really. But that bloody racial crap, sitting with us and talking about your culture and your roots, y’know? Like she’s so fucking in with the indigenous. It got to me.”

  Mae’s vision faded quickly in and out, returning to the ballroom. Participants sat in a crammed circle, several people deep in places. Jamie lay on his back. Kandy tapped his shoulder. “Sit up. Jill’s coming.”

  “Fuck. Why’d you let me eat all that? I fucking sprained my guts.”

  “You eat too fast. Come on, you were supposed to feel better after that walk.”

  “Nah. Just refried the beans.” He snort-laughed. “You may not want to sit near me.”

  Jill walked through the center of the circle, took a place between Kandy and Jamie again, and picked up her drum. Jamie sat up, stretched uncomfortably, let out a small belch, and reclined again, propped on his elbows. Kandy gave him a stern look. He flashed his charm smile and made an attempt at respectful and alert posture.

  “This afternoon,” said Jill, “we’ll seek our power animals. Most of you will find yours in the lower world, but some will be in the upper world. Be careful of middle-world spirits, they can deceive you. Go to your known place of entry, and as the drum speeds up, you will either climb or crawl, fly or fall, to meet your animal. Remember, you can travel as a poet and an artist. Create. Or, you may find the spirits take you. If they do, don’t fight them.”

  Jill looked around the circle. “Newcomers, we have a custom you should be prepared for. If anyone starts having a shamanic emergence, I will change the drumming to this beat and we will form the circle around that person to hold them in the heart of our community.” She demonstrated a shift from rapid pounding to light fluttering. “The emergence of the spirit can take many forms, such as loss of control in crying, laughter, voices, dancing, or animal calls. If it claims you, let it through. The crisis needs to burn through the veils of the ordinary. Don’t interrupt it. We will dance you through it in safety.”

  She instructed the participants to do as they felt moved—sit, lie, or stand—and she would begin to guide the journey. Jamie lay back and closed his eyes, all too clearly intending to take a nap after a big lunch. A few others lay down, but most chose to sit against the wall, or to stand swaying, eyes closed, as Jill drummed slowly.

  “Call ... in your mind ...” She spoke in a sing-song voice. “Call your animal. Call your animal.”

  She kept the beat steady, occasionally repeating the incantation. Gradually, she accelerated the drumming. “It is coming,” she intoned. “See it coming. Feel it coming.”

  Jamie twisted and began to giggle. Jill looked at him and walked to the center of the group. He curled up on his side and struggled, one fist to his mouth, the other thumping the rug, but laughter escaped. Jill beat her drum faster and he laughed harder. When he let out a raucous hah-snort-hah, a few people near him began to chuckle. Out of control, flipped to his back, thrashing in the type of fit that inspired the phrase “rolling in the aisles.” The majority of the group still swayed, sat with intensely concentrated faces, or lay still. Jill accelerated her drumming again, and brought it to the flutter beat, cuing her participants to surround Jamie. They came like flocking birds.

  He half-sat, stared at the s
huffle-dancing feet around him, and flopped back in a new explosion of hilarity, fizzing with failed attempts to stop. When his laughter subsided at last, Jill slowed the drum, and the group dispersed to resume sitting, lying, or swaying. Kandy returned to her seat against a wall, eyes closed.

  The drumming slowed until Jill struck one loud thump to end it. The scattered men and women opened their eyes and obediently formed one large circle.

  “Beautiful.” Jill smiled at them. “Extraordinary. The spirits come to us in many ways. Including the tricksters.” She held up her drumstick in a powerful ceremonial gesture that swept all eyes to it. “The spirit world is here. We are in it. It is in us.” She lowered the drumstick. “We’ll start the talking circle now. After Jamie shares, break up into four circles so all can share. Pass any object for the talking stick in your own circles. Its meaning matters, not its form.”

  She handed Jamie her drumstick. “Tell us about your experience.”

  He looked back and forth between Jill and the drumstick. “Like, what happened to me?”

  “Yes. When the spirits took you. While you have the stick, you speak. When you’re done, you pass it.”

  He swallowed a laugh. “Right.”

  After sitting a while, silent, frowning, and twirling the drumstick, Jamie smiled at some private thought. He stood, and a snaky, liquid grace flowed through him, transforming him. With a voice big enough for the stage, he declared, “I was Old Man Coyote.” He crouched, snarled, and then grinned. “I lifted my tail.” His movements controlled yet overblown, he swung his hips, aiming his buttocks at Jill. “And I farted out the stars.”

  The group laughed, all but Kandy.

  Jamie lifted one leg to the side, cocked like a canine’s. “Then I pissed the great rivers.” He set his foot down and squatted, speaking in a low, growly voice. “I sat and I shat out the rocks of the earth.”

  The group chuckled, but less than they had at his first gesture and line. Their rapt gazes suggested they might take him seriously.

  “Then—” He stood, flung his head back, grasped an invisible partner and made pelvic thrusts, his pace and volume building to a crescendo. “I whipped out my donger and fucked my wife ’til the heat made the sun and we sweated the rain and she shook and made thunder as I shot out my lightning.”

  He shuddered orgasmically, yipped like a coyote, swung the drumstick to thump himself on the chest and the backside, and finished by flourishing the stick in the same pose Jill had struck earlier.

  Jill’s expression was inscrutable. Impressed, insulted, cynical, intrigued, or a little of each? Most members of the circle had wide eyes and open jaws, exhilaration and awe on their faces. Kandy stared at the floor. Jamie seemed not to see her. From his triumphant, theatrical stance, he dropped to sitting and handed the stick to the man beside him as if inviting someone to take a turn in a pub game of darts. “Your go, mate.”

  The man took the stick, shook his head and mouthed, “Wow.”

  “Four circles,” Jill said. The participants dispersed to the four corners and the room soon buzzed with stories of animal spirits—coyote, wolf, horse, and eagle. Jill prowled from group to group, nodding and listening.

  She stopped and knelt beside Kandy, who held someone’s ballpoint pen as the talking stick. “I didn’t see a power animal,” Kandy said, subdued and barely audible. “I saw a beetle walking on the dirt. One of those shiny black ones you get in the summer. Like I was home in Cochiti watching bugs outside my house.”

  She passed the pen to the woman beside her, who described an encounter with a wild stallion that mounted a mare. The storyteller’s style echoed, in a modified and untrained way, Jamie’s performance. Jill nodded approvingly, keeping a hand on Kandy’s shoulder.

  Mae’s vision darkened and shifted. When she refocused, she saw the ballroom again. The workshop appeared to be coming to an end. Jamie drew Kandy apart from the crowd, his energy intense and urgent. “I’ve had enough. Let’s get out of here before they circle me again. I’m ready to blow, and I don’t mean another fart.”

  “No.” She took a step back from him. “You shouldn’t make fun, Jamie.”

  “I didn’t laugh on purpose—Jeezus.”

  “I meant after. You treated Jill’s work like a joke. It’s serious.”

  “It’s theater. So I did theater. Don’t you get it? I had a spiritual experience from the wrong fucking culture and no one even noticed. Jesus. The only thing that’s serious is the fuck-load of money she’s taking from you. You could save that to buy silver and stones and tools. You could put a deposit on an apartment. She’s robbing you blind.”

  “She’s not. Something happens. I hear the drum and I get quiet. And I saw this bug—”

  “It’s the drum, love. Not Jill.”

  Kandy looked at her feet, hands in her jeans pockets. “I wanted you to understand this. It’s important to me.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.” Jamie pulled her head in against his chest and mussed her hair. “I’m a stupid, loud, ill-mannered, inconsiderate—”

  “Stop it.” Kandy pulled away. “You’re not.” She looked up into his eyes. “But you could be nicer. You could try to understand. Please, stay for the rest.”

  “Can’t. One day is enough.” He jammed the straw fedora he’d been carrying onto his unruly hair and clasped Kandy in a hug that brought her up on her toes. “Wish you’d see what I see. Save your money. Go back to AA. You were doing all right with that. And it was free.”

  She pushed out of the hug and stepped back. “I thought I explained what Jill said about that.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t buy it.”

  Head down, arms folded, Kandy started to walk away.

  Jamie jogged around in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Jesus, love, I’m trying to help you.” He exhaled noisily as she wormed her way out of his hold. “Fuck. Let’s have a better goodbye than this. Come on.”

  Kandy kicked at the carpet. He lifted her chin, but she jerked away. Sadness crept into his voice. “I’ll see you then. Hooroo, love.”

  He opened his arms to her but she didn’t respond. With a groan and a gesture of air-clutching frustration, he headed for the exit, cussing under his breath. Kandy bit her lip as she watched him stride away.

  Jill stepped apart from a cluster of admirers and held up a finger, indicating they should wait. She followed Jamie and caught him near the door, placing a hand on his arm.

  “Leaving? You’ll be back tomorrow, won’t you?”

  “Nah. Other plans.”

  “You should reconsider. I think you have a calling.”

  “Pig’s arse. To do what?” He locked eyes with her. “What you do?”

  “You could work with me and do very well.”

  Jamie turned away, rubbing his hands against the seams of his jeans. When he faced Jill again, he eyed her up and down as if newly interested,

  “Nice clothes.” He put on the charm smile and earned her smile in return. “Emperor.”

  He walked out, leaving her glaring at his back.

  She spun on her heel and hurried over to Kandy, who had drifted alone toward another exit from the ballroom. Jill fell in step with her and caressed her upper arm.

  “Rainbow, dear, you had such an interesting experience today. So unusual. Colorful as your friend is, I think your work may be deeper. I’m having dinner in my room, room service. Why don’t you join me? My treat.”

  Kandy’s round face lit up. She brushed away tears. “Thank you. Thank you. That means so much.”

  They walked to the elevator and Jill pressed the button. “So,” she said, resettling her heavy necklace and smoothing out her collar, “how in the world did you meet Jamie Ellerbee? Stan wasn’t studying you, was he?”

  “Oh, no. It was ...” Kandy looked up at Jill with childlike openness. “It was in college. We were in a therapy group.”

  The elevator doors slid apart. Jill touched Kandy’s back, guiding her in. “How interesting. Tel
l me more.” The doors closed.

  The vision shifted, moving Mae through the tunnel into a darkened hotel room with its door propped open. Kandy, in a different T-shirt and old, loose jeans, sat at the desk, writing on hotel stationery by the light from the hallway. Doors to several other rooms also stood open, and women circulated from room to room, laughing and chatting, carrying various alcoholic beverages. Mae recognized faces from the ballroom, but everyone had changed clothes. It looked like another night of the same workshop. Two women stopped in the hallway, calling to Kandy to come out and join them. She hesitated, then declined, saying that watching was party enough for her.

  Jill, in a short denim skirt instead of the usual tight jeans, stepped out of an elevator. “Embracing the Divine Madness, are we?”

  “Omigod, it’s Jill,” came a voice from one of the rooms.

  “Yes, it’s Jill.” The shamanic teacher sounded pleased and amused. She passed the women in the hall to stand in the doorway of the room across from Kandy’s. “Is everyone ecstatic?”

  One of the women raised a glass. “Not quite.”

  “Then you know the ways to get there.” Jill swaggered into the party. “There are men on the next floor if you don’t find each other adequate to the job.” Her eyes flashed, and the women giggled and whooped. “Well,” she said, leaning her buttocks on the edge of a dresser, “don’t just stand there, someone get me a drink.”

  “What do you like?” asked a thin woman in clothes and jewelry like Jill’s.

  “Scotch on the rocks, if I might be so lucky.”

  “Got it!” The woman ducked out to return with the whole bottle as well as a drink for Jill.

  Jill blessed her with a gap-toothed smile that stayed flat at the top. “Don’t let me stop the party. Carry on.”

  More women crowded into the room, but they became less festive, less talkative, in their workshop leader’s presence. She excused herself and crossed to the opposite room where Kandy was still writing.