Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“Doesn’t he have a special outfit? Where’s his costume?” “He will have no clothes. He will be naked.” “No, he won’t.” Storm took up the rhythm, first inside himself, and then bringing his

hands together loudly, and louder. They all watched him, neither ap

proving nor disapproving. Mahathir gestured as if to silence him. Storm stepped up beside the boy and raised his challenge. “I AM THE TRUE COMPENSATOR!” The clapping went on, but he had their attention. “I AM THE TRUE COMPENSATOR!” He put his hands to his

sides and bowed his head. The priest spoke with Mahathir. Storm raised his face. “Tell him I’m the one. This kid’s an imposter.” “I will not tell him.” “Tell the kid, then.” “I cannot.” “Man, it’s no good if he’s doing it for money. You’ve gotta do it for the

thing, man, the thing. You need a reason, you need to be sent by the signs and messages.”

The priest spoke urgently to Mahathir, but Mahathir kept silent. “You want to take this man’s place?” “It’s not the kid’s place. It’s mine. I was sent.” He spoke directly to the

priest. “This motherfucker doesn’t know what he’s doing. I know what I’m doing. I know where it fits, I know what’s real.” “I cannot say this to him. I don’t know what will happen. We might

get killed.” “They’re a gentle people, man. Gentle, right?” “Do you understand what you’re doing? No.” “I’m getting this poor kid off the hook.” “No. You don’t understand this.” “I thought you were a Muslim. Do you believe this jive?” “Here in this area, where the trees are so tall, where the vehicles can

not come, where no one comes, this area is quite different. God is deal

ing with them differently in this area.” “Yeah — I get that, man. I just wondered if you did.” The priest spoke most emphatically. Now Mahathir replied at length,

and the priest listened with his head bowed, nodding his head, interrupting at intervals. The priest spoke briefly to the boy, who listened without protest, and Storm understood the sham would be revealed. “Kid, you came into this business without settling certain things in

side yourself.” “He is doing this to save his family.” “He gets the money. Tell him that. He gets the money. Hey, man, the

money’s yours. I’m not trying to step on anybody’s game.”

Mahathir spoke with the boy. The boy stepped backward several paces, turned, and pushed through the circle of females and the circle of young boys and stood beyond.

Mahathir said, “I knew this. I’m not superstitious. But it’s not unusual to see the future. Many people see it. It happens. I saw your future. I tried to tell you.”

The priest stood beside him and cried out in a strangled language and placed his hand on Storm’s head.

The clapping ceased. An old woman moaned. Storm raised his arms high and shouted, “I AM THE COMPENSATOR, MOTHERFUCKERS. I AM THE COMPENSATOR.”

The priest slapped his hands together once. Twice. Again, and he resumed the rhythm. The others took it up.

Men gathered in a third circle around them. The priest beckoned, and the headman came forth into the circle with Storm, the priest, and Mahathir. He carried an axe.

It takes what it takes, Storm promised the Powers.

The priest spoke loudly to the headman.

“He tells him to assemble the gods of the village.”

The headman raised a hand and the circles parted for a quartet of women, each clutching the corner of a blanket. They laid it before the priest—a pile of hacked wooden carvings, most no bigger than a hand, several others up to half the size of any of their Roo worshippers. The four women threw back their heads and bawled like children as the headman attacked the figures with his axe. As he worked at it, getting them all, and as the women knelt to collect the pieces and add them to the pyre, Mahathir said, “They break their household gods and throw them on the fire because the gods haven’t helped them. These gods must die. The world may end with the death of these gods. The sacrifice of the soul of the stranger may prevent the world’s end. Then new gods will rise.

Storm observed the observers. Their faces barely showed in the light of the many candles strewn randomly at their feet. They looked not joyful, not solemn either—mouths hanging open, heads nodding as they clapped, clapped, clapped—looked ready in their souls.

Then the priest stood beside the headman and spoke loudly. “Go there,” Mahathir told Storm. “They will undress you now.” Storm walked to the priest as Mahathir said, “God help you!”

The priest held the shards of the icons. The headman bowed and pointed at Storm’s soggy shoes. Storm kicked them off. The headman bowed lower and touched Storm’s foot and pinched the fabric of his sock. Placing his hand on the headman’s shoulder, Storm peeled off his socks and stood up straight. Two young women came forward and tugged at his buttons and his fly. He thought of making a joke, but he was speechless. They pulled his pack from his back and then his shirt and helped him step out of his shorts and his underpants and then retreated into the circle. The rhythmic clapping continued. Every pair of hands now. Storm stood naked.

Facing Storm, the priest reached into the flap of his G-string for a folded sheet of paper which he straightened and held up close to Storm’s face—Storm saw nothing on it—and spoke loudly to the Roo, and showed the page again to Storm. He spoke to the headman.

The headman called out. A man brought him a spear.

The priest spoke. The headman handed over the spear. The priest skewered the page on its point, marched to the pyre, and, extending the spear as high as he could, rising on tiptoe, he jammed the paper among the logs and scraped it from the spearpoint.

“Wait,” Storm said.

He squatted at his pack and found his notebook in its plastic bag. He tore out the last page and replaced the notebook and stood holding out the page.

“It’s a little poem, man.” The priest came to Storm with spearpoint extended and accepted the offering and took it to the pyre and made it part of the sacred fuel. Storm let it be known: “COMPENSATION, BABY. COMPENSATION TONIGHT.” The priest spoke loudly and threw down his weapon. Storm bowed his head.

The blanket, only rags now, lay almost bare of the remnants of the gods. The priest scooped up the last few scraps in his hands. The headman dragged the blanket a few meters from the pyre, the Roo widening their circles as he did so. He made a careful business of straightening its edges and pausing to look up at the heavens as if navigating by invisible stars.

Against his chest the priest held the shards of the icons. He came to stand facing Storm.

He spoke again, and Storm heard Mahathir’s voice from beyond the rings of the Roo: “Kneel down.” He did so. The priest knelt too and spoke softly, and the headman assisted Storm in lying out flat on his back on the mutilated blanket. Onto Storm’s belly the priest let fall the few shards and made of them a small heap there.

He spoke, and Storm heard Mahathir: “He wants you to know this is only a symbol. It’s a fire on your flesh, but they will not light it. You will not be burned physically.”

Chosen to suffer penance because no one else is left. Traversing inordinate zones, the light beyond brighter or dimmer, never enough light, nothing to tell him, no direction home. One figure yet to be revealed in his truth.

Everyone had unmasked himself, every false face had dissolved, every dissemblance but one, his own.

Storm turned his head to follow as the priest returned to the pyre, where he stooped to pick up his soft-drink bottle and slosh liquid from it around the base. In the air an odor of diesel arose. The headman brought two glowing coconut halves and they each used a candle to set the fire.