Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices: A Novel

IX: Mise-en-Scène

IX MISE-EN-SCENE He was at a loss. Youcan't create something out ofnothing . But down there in the void of generation, what was the nature of possibility? The dance of illusion, the quirkinessof aberration, chaos? Chaos is in the world, he thought, lying behind every moment. Crack the instant like an eggand the dark rushes upon you but with dancing sparks, as when he'd rubbed his eyes as a child to make the colors dance before his eyes. Sparks of brilliance: blue, orange, white. Now too the colors had whirled around him, been taken up into the violence of entry, the rush of the outside in. Overwhelming. Light and sound seizing hold in the dark burst of confusion, taking him up, whirling him around, till he lost all sense ofdirection. Gropingalong, trying to keep his balance. Then to his knees, crawling, as though along a dark passageway, trying to find an opening. The light had deserted him. He might have been a slave crawling underground , the word freedom in his mind without his knowing what it meant. He felt his way,his ears and eyes intricate antennae for a new set of impressions. Then the darkness lifted and he stood up, outside under the stars. He stood unthinking, gazing into distances along vistas, as though he'd stepped through a doorway into a difference. Only half awakened. His name came floating down like a loose garment that did not seem to fit: Bill Brodkey. Billbillbill. The name fell in a ringing , ringed him, captured him to a life of dubious ownership. Let it go, he thought. BrodkeyBill were you? Bill, oh WillieBill. Follow-oh, follow-ho, WillieBill. Wind singing, singsong, song of winging wind, winding-sheet, death and dark. Calling him, 211 ringing him with changes and dangers? He broke into a sweat. Follow, follow. The sound echoed in the wood, he heard hooting, he heard laughter. His name was in the woods and they were telling him to go get it. He was standing outside it. Should he claim it, that life of dubious ownership? Should he want it? Or let it be, beckoned by a suggestion that pulsed beyond the borders of his name? He stood outside. How had he gotten there? The darkness stirred with people he didn't recognize but might know, and whether the sounds he heard reached across the distances of space or mind he couldn't tell. A world inside his head, that was possible. Chaos there too. He paused, breathing hard. He'd been running, though he didn't know why, dodgingin and out among the trees. He looked around him, dazed. Someone being chased? Himself? Running, always running, is that what he'd been doing ? Driving himself so hard he never knew he could pause. Or was it Bird? The old Bird? Washe running from his death? Had they trapped and killed him? Or was he himself dead? Maybe he'd died and was living outside his life. His mind yielded nothing . Only the memory of shrieks in the darkness. Frightened women perhaps, the sound of weeping? He couldn't tell. He felt he was being watched, by dark presences slipping between the trees. He tried to remember. His mind yielded an image: Bird and Joan heading toward the door, then a dark rush that could have seized them up like leaves, all of them, and blown them into nowhere in a shrieking chorus. But no, that was time rushing past the dark edges of matter, toward a stillness. People standing there, people moving—a doorway. Did they have to climb down a stairway? Bird beckoning. The Wilderness, he'd said. Pointing toward that. He had caught a final glimpse of the strange gnomelike man, who sat unmoved. Chaos again. Noise and confusion. Clamor of voices, barking of dogs. "Where the hell are we? Where did they go?" "We're lost, I tell you, here in the dark. Where's the moon?" "Watch where you're going. Badenough with the tree roots." "Watch it yourself." 212 "Why didn't you arrest them? Goddam frauds. Liars and frauds. Killing's too good . . ." "I want to be home in bed. Oh, I want to be there, all warm under the covers/' "Where is he?" "In a clump of bushes somewhere with that film star he's screwing." "Just leading us on." "Dark . . . my God, it's thicker than...