THEO
THE NEXT MORNING Suzy Wu’s eyes gazed up from the paper on my doorstep: GIRL MISSING DAY 10. I laid it on the table—Where was she?
Outside, Solomon sat thirty feet away, hunched on the stump next to his fire, his hunting knife at his belt, his back to me. His grizzled hair hung to his shoulder blades and was matted from mist against his flannel shirt. He was alone, speaking Nehalem to himself—that mysterious language of his elders; guttural sounds that to me were poetry.
He stood and threw his knife into the black painted circle on the faded board against the side of his hut. As a boy I’d tossed my knife there a thousand times, aiming straight and steady, funneling my anger into that target. His skilled hand landed the blade dead center, as always.
He turned toward me and said, “We are archers. Each of our days is an arrow.” His crinkled eyes squinted against the sun. “Yesterday you aimed high and steady. Good.”
I felt like a ten-year-old boy again, receiving my mentor’s approval. “Thank you.”
He pointed to Raven in the tree above us and said, “Ravens dwell beyond realm of time and space; they are bringers of messages from spirit world.” Above us the coal-colored raven with jet-black shaggy feathers around his neck made a throaty rattle sound.
“Raven is omen of change,” he said. “You soon will gain wisdom and courage needed to enter your darkness; the home of all that is not yet in form. Those letters, your darkness?”
“I suppose . . . ”
“Burn them. Let it go.” He went inside his hut and closed the door. Raven took flight. The size of a red-tailed hawk, he hovered and circled over our adjoining yards. Solomon’s incense smoldered; the burning wood crackled.
Let it go? Thought I had. Thought I let “it” go while lying shot and dying in a God forsaken chicken wire cell in Korea. Thought I let it go when I put on this white collar. But then, there she was again. And then, gone . . . again.
I thought about the last time we were together, Andréa telling me about the Impressionists and the blue hour, and how I didn’t know then that I’d spend years trying to recall, imagine, internalize. Make her words, the sound of her voice, part of me—poetry in my darkness. I memorized her words like I once did Keats, Browning, or Kipling. And now all I wanted was to un-ring that bell, erase the sound of her voice, forget her sweet whispers. But all I could do was remember when she traced my body and face with her soft fingertips, casting every bit of our time into memory. Everything she ever said, breath to my lungs, resurrection for my body.