UnSouled

He slips the key into the lock, turns it, and slowly opens the door.

Immediately he recognizes the shapes hanging from the ceiling. Guitars. Did Wil work here? Cam searches his memories, but can’t find evidence of that. There are songs from this place, though. They’ve begun playing in his head, and he knows if he gives voice to them, more connections will be made.

A guitar sits on the counter. It must have been played recently because he finds it in decent tune. A twelve string. His favorite. He breathes in the woody, earthy smell of the guitar shop and begins to play.

37 • Una

She dreams of Wil again. She dreams of him way too often. At times she wishes he would leave her alone, because the waking is always so painful. This time, however, when she awakes, the music he played in her dream continues. It’s faint, but it’s still there.

At first she thinks she must have left one of his recordings playing in the living room. Or maybe Grace, who tends to dig out everything from every drawer, has found one and is playing it—but when she goes into the living room, she finds Grace asleep on the sofa. Connor and Lev are asleep as well in the spare room, and the music, she realizes, is coming from downstairs.

Una opens the door, and the volume rises. She hears it echoing in the stairwell, ghostly, but very much real. It’s not a recording; it’s live—it’s a song of Wil’s that only he can play, and her heart nearly bursts from her chest. He’s alive! He’s alive, he’s come home, and he’s greeting her with a serenade!

She hurls herself down the stairs, her bathrobe billowing behind her. She knows what she’s thinking can’t be—but she wants so desperately for it to be true that it shuts down all logic within her.

Una bursts into the shop to see a figure sitting on a stool playing a guitar she had just prepared for a customer to pick up in the morning. Although she can’t see his face, she can see the way he holds himself that it’s not Wil.

“Who are you?” she demands, barely able to restrain her fury. It’s not Wil. “What are you doing in my shop?”

He stops playing, looks at her just for a moment, then gets up. She notices something off about his face before he turns away. He puts the guitar down on the counter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was anyone here.”

“So you think you can just break in?”

“It wasn’t locked.”

Which is a lie—ever since Lev and the others came to stay with her a few days ago, she’s constantly checking that lock. Then on the counter beside the guitar, she sees the spare key. No one knew about that key. Even she had forgotten about it. So how did this intruder find it?

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Wait!”

Una knows she should let him go. She knows that if she reaches to pull this strand of hope, any number of things could unravel. Everything could unravel. But she has to know. “That song you were playing . . . where did you hear it?”

“I heard it played once by an Arápache boy,” he tells her, “and I remembered it.”

But she knows this, too, is a lie. Even those with the skill to play something after hearing it only once could never capture the nuances and the passion. That belonged to Wil alone, and yet . . .”

“Come a little closer.”

He’s hesitant, but does as she asks. Now, as he steps into the light, she realizes what the oddness about his face was. His entire face is covered in thick pancake makeup—like a vain old woman trying to hide her wrinkles.

“I have a skin condition,” he tells her.

His eyes are engaging. Persuasive. “Are you an AWOL? Because if you are, don’t look for sanctuary from me. You’ll have to find someone else to sponsor you.”

“I’m looking for some friends,” he tells her. “They mentioned this guitar shop.”

“What are their names?”

He pauses before he speaks. “I can’t tell you their names, or it would compromise their safety. But if you know them, then you know who I’m talking about. They’re AWOLs. Notorious AWOLs.”

So he’s come for Lev and Connor. Or maybe he’s there for Grace, to take her back to whatever life she was plucked from. His eyes speak of honesty, but so much about this visitor seems wrong. He could be working for the Juvenile Authority—or worse—a bounty hunter hoping to bring Connor and Lev in for a hefty reward. She decides not to telegraph her suspicion, though. Not until she has a better idea of his intentions.

“Well, if you can’t tell me their names, tell me yours.”

“Mac,” he says. “My name is Mac,” and he holds out his hand for her to shake.

It’s the feel of his hand that gives him away. The firmness and texture of his grip. Sense memory knows that hand before she’s even consciously aware of it. When she looks down at it, she almost gasps, but keeps it in. She turns the hand slightly in hers to notice a tiny scar on the third knuckle of the index finger—from when Wil cut himself as a boy. Now she has visual proof. She forces her breathing to stay calm and in control. She has yet to fully comprehend what this means, but she will.

Una releases his hand and turns away, for fear that something in her face might give her away. “I’ll tell you about your friends, Mac—under one condition,” she says.

“Yes, anything.”

She grabs the guitar from the counter and holds it out to him. “That you play for me again.”

He smiles, takes the guitar, and sits down on the stool. “My pleasure!”

He begins, and the song grabs the thread of hope that Una so foolishly tugged at and sails away with it, rending Una down to her very essence. The song is haunting. It is beautiful. It is Wil’s music alive but in someone else. She lets the strains of melody and harmony caress her. Then she comes up behind him, kabongs him over the head with a heavy guitar so forcefully that it breaks, and he falls unconscious on the floor.

She listens to make sure there is no stirring from upstairs. She must not wake the others. Satisfied that no one has heard, she heaves “Mac” onto her shoulders like a sack of flour. Although she’s a small woman, she’s strong from working the lathe, plane, and sander. It tests the limit of her strength and endurance, but she manages to move through the night streets and finally into the woods.

Una knows the woods well. Wil was at home there, and so she came to feel that way, as well. She carries him nearly a half mile through the forest with nothing to light her way but the moon, until she reaches the old sweat lodge—a place once used to begin the traditional vision quest for Arápache youth who were of age, before a more modern one was built.

Once inside, she tears off his jacket and shirt and uses them to string him up between two poles six feet apart. She knots the fabric so tightly only a knife could undo it. The rest of his unconscious body slumps on the ground, his arms outstretched above him in a supplicative Y.

This is how she leaves him for the night.

When she returns at dawn, she brings a chain saw.

38 • Cam

Cam knows this is not going to be a good day the moment he sees the chain saw.

His head hurts in so many places, he can’t begin to know where he was actually hit. It feels as if all the members of his internal community have taken up arms against one another and are slicing his brain to bits.

The young woman sitting beside the chain saw hefts a rock in one hand.

“Good, you’re awake,” she says. “I was running out of stones.”

He notices that there are rocks all around him. She’s been throwing them at him to wake him up. Smaller aches on his body attest to that—and throbbing in his shoulders attest to the fact that his arms are tied to poles on either side—strung up with his own clothes. He gets up on his knees to relieve the strain on his shoulders, surprised that his seams haven’t split—but then, Roberta always told him his seams were stronger than the flesh they held together.

He takes in his surroundings before speaking. He’s in a large dome-shaped structure made of stones and mud—or at least made to look that way. Morning sunlight spills through gaps in the stone. It’s far more primitive than anything else he’s seen on the reservation. There’s a washed-out pile of ashes in the middle, and on the other side of the ashes, sits the girl and her chain saw. The light pouring through the hole up above illuminates her face just enough for him to recognize her as the girl from the guitar shop.

His last memory was playing for her. And now he’s here. He can only guess what transpired in between.

“I guess you didn’t like my song.”

“It wasn’t your song at all,” she responds. He can feel her anger from across the room like a blast of radiation. “And by the look of you, that’s not the only thing that isn’t yours.” She gets up, grabs the chain saw, and steps over the pile of ashes toward him.

He struggles to get to his feet. She touches the silent chain saw to his bare chest. He can feel the cold steel of the dormant chain as it caresses his skin. She uses its curved tip to trace the seams.

“Up and down and around—those lines go everywhere, don’t they? Like an old shaman’s sand drawings.”

Cam says nothing as she moves the chain saw along his torso and then across his neck. “The shaman’s lines are meant to trace life and creation—is that what your lines are for too? Are you a creation? Are you alive?”

The question of questions. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself.”

“Are you that man-made man I’ve heard tell of? What is it they call you? ‘Sham Complete’?”

“Something like that.”

She takes a step back. “Well, you can keep all those other parts, Sham. But those hands deserve a proper funeral.” Then she starts the chain saw, and it roars to life, puffing forth acrid, hellish smoke and releasing an earsplitting report that makes Cam’s seams ache in alarm.

“Brakes! Red light! Brick wall! Stop!”

“Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out when you came last night?”

His eyes are fixed on the deadly blade, but he tears his gaze away to focus on her—to get through to her. “I was drawn here. He was drawn here—and if you take these hands, you’ll never hear him play again!”

It was the wrong thing to say. Her face contorts into a mask of sheer hatred. “I’d already gotten used to that. I’ll get used to it again.”

And she swings the blade toward his right arm.

Cam can do nothing but brace himself. He readies himself for the surge of pain, watching as the chain saw comes down—but then at the last instant, she twists her arm, aborting the attack, and the momentum veers sideways, cutting his knotted jacket, and setting his right arm free from the pole.

She hurls the chain saw across the room, screaming in frustration, and Cam thrusts his free arm toward her. He means to grab her by the neck and hurl her to the ground, but instead he finds his hand reaching behind her to the ribbon in her hair and pulling it free.

Her long dark hair flares out from behind her as the ribbon falls to the ground, and she backs away, staring at him in horrified disbelief.