Haunting Shoes and Shadows

          Faceless people wearing gray zoomed up and down sidewalks.

          A door opened pulling him inside. A towering mound of mismatched shoes stood in the center of a room. Trying on one shoe after the other; none fit.

          00:00 flashed in blue neon on his watch.

          He stepped outside.

A car slammed on its breaks. Looking inside the window, a faceless woman wore a gray dress.  Dark hair cascaded down her back. She touched her hair, tugging at its roots. A wig came off, revealing shoulder length pale blonde hair. Pulling at her hair strands of red ringlets brushed against her neck.

He said, "Why the disguise?"

Bubbles floated all around him.

"I know it's you."

The alarm blared.

          Waking up, Brad took a quick look in the closet. All the shoes remained in the shoe rack in their segregated compartments not stacked in some tower. Thank goodness!

He stared at the clock. It said 4:00 AM.

The phone rang.

"Brad, are you ready?"

"Huh?"

His sister Leanne said, "Brad, don't tell me you forgot the photo shoot with Archon, my boss Tomas is counting on you."

          "No. I had this dream..."

          "You and Martin Luther King and everyone else, but go ahead, out with it. Grandma said I need to listen more."

          He did a recap of the dream, then she tapped her fingernails on the phone and said, "Duh, you photograph shoes, of course you're going to dream about them. I see stupid reports from work in my sleep all the time.  Now, the woman in the dream that's a wake up call, it's time you dated and got laid."

          Brad said, "It's not that simple. When I photograph the shoes I...FEEL LIKE A SHADOW GLANCING AT DAYLIGHT, NOT KNOWING IT CAUSED THE REFLECTION." (Jen-Zen's words came to him.)

          "First you talk like Martin Luther King, now a poet and it's not even 5:00 A.M. What are you going to do at 10:00 o'clock start speaking Greek?"

          He laughed. "Well..."

          "Hey did I tell you about Theo, my new honey.  He's playful and stable. He sells books to schools and goes running. You'd like him. We should all go running sometime." She tapped her fingernails on the phone and said, "Wait a second. What am I saying? He wouldn't want to wait while you photograph things. Man, you frustrated me last time. You stopped three freaking times in the middle of a run to photograph a damned shoe."

          "Inspiration, what'd you gonna do? I see the lost shoes everywhere, on the beach, in the parking lot, in the..."

          Leanne interrupted, "Yeah, I get the picture. You should go talk to someone. One of my coworker's been seeing a therapist. The lady's helping her get over..."

          He interrupted, "So fill me in about your boss."

"He liked the photos you did for that sunglass firm."

"Why?"

"Brad, we need to get a move on it, or the van leaves without us. Shit, we need to be there in ten minutes."

The soft whir of Archon's van hummed along the dirt roads through the outback of Cardemon Valley. Feeling caught between sleep and slumber Brad's unfocused eyes looked out the back window of the van.  He saw black specks in a sea of brown and green, splotches of orange and patches of brown.  Like Jen-Zen's words, "SEEING LANDSCAPE FRECKLES, THE PLANE LANDS."

His head tingled. He rubbed his eyes, adjusting the focus. The black specks became crows, the orange and brown became houses and farms.  He glanced at the cookie-cutter housing tracks, nondescript strip malls, rolling hills, herb and avocado farms, countless crows, and stared at the sides of the road sifting with his well trained eyes through fast food containers, strips of tire tread and discarded clothes; looking for the road mysteries.

One of the archaeology crew members, unrolled the window in the back of the van. The sounds of a crow squawking jarred Leanne, she looked around from side to side, disoriented not sure where she was, moving not so different from a crow that landed on the side of the road and pecked at the remains of food on a take out container.

Glancing at an irritation ditch running along the perimeter of an avocado ranch, something yellow caught his eye. Brad pressed the zoom lens on the digital camera and smiled at the site of a sneaker.

While he clicked a few pictures, Leanne nudged him and said softly, pointing to a field of wildflowers, "We should pick some before the field's grazed for some housing track."

"They say the wildflowers will come back." He spoke Jen-Zen's words.

"Getting a bit poetic?"

Brad said, "Don't say that. It's just an expression."

Yeah right. Jen-Zen wrote whole poems about the disappearance of wildflowers. It figures. She knew about leaving.

A high-pitched whistle filled the van. Loud yawns, moans, and heckles greeted the whistle, then silence as Tomas, Leanne's boss and owner of Archon, an archaeological firm said to the crew, "This construction company's a good one. They invited Dale Anders, I mean Red Hawk, an Indian, I've known for some time, to visit the site before we were consulted.  You know what that means."

Someone yelled, "Potent site, right boss?"

Leanne blurted out, "Maybe we'll find something unknown and become famous."

Tomas said, "Forget Indiana Jones.  It's tedious work in the hot sun. Most of the time we find triangular projectile points, bedrock milling equipment, and stone scrapers, nothing you'd find exciting."

Leanne rubbed lotion in a circular motion on her calves and said, "Seeing the site will make those long reports I edit come alive."

Brad said, "Watch your words."

"Oh, you're one to talk, Brad. You don't know a thing about preparing Environmental Impact Reports."

He shrugged his shoulders and let it go, not wanting to make a scene in front of Leanne's co-workers.

The van parked. Tomas pointed towards Red Hawk, a man with long dark hair pulled into a pony-tail, who stood at the edge of the site wearing an oversized khaki shirt over jeans and mud covered boots. He nodded in their direction. Tomas waved then said to the crew, "Remember to be respectful and take your time. I don't want any of our best finds broken, understand? Last time, someone rushed and broke a piece of pottery. If they'd taken their time the piece would have been recovered intact."

Brad asked Tomas, "What do you want me to do?"

"Just set up your equipment. I'll call you over when I need something."

Red Hawk approached them. Brad felt a tingling in his side for a second then it passed. Red Hawk lit a match to a bundle of sage. Smoke swirled in the air. The smell made Brad's nostrils burn. He pinched his nose to keep from sneezing.

When the smoke died down Tomas asked Red Hawk why he lit the sage.

Red Hawk said, "To cleanse the air."

Tomas raised his eyebrows "And?"

"Ah Tomas you know me too well. Touch your hair."

Tomas took off his black baseball cap and ran his fingers through his short cropped blonde hair. A few strands of hair shot straight up.

Tomas nodded and put his hat back on. Red Hawk looked up at a thin strand of silver clouds and said, "The spirits are restless."

Brad bit on his lower lip and muttered, "No kidding."

Red Hawk approached him and waved his hands inches above his head.

Brad stared at the golden flakes in his eyes and thought that in the right light, they'd look like cat's eyes. The man's hand fell to his side as he said, "You're there sometimes."

Leanne scrunched her nose, disapproval written all over her face.

Tomas called after Leanne, "Watch the crew and let Red Hawk work."

Leanne shot him a look "Behave," before joining Tomas and the archaeologists.

Brad said to the man, "Are you a Shaman, I mean is that your profession?"

"I teach Native American Studies and do some energy cleansing work. I know how strange this is going to sound, but I think you'll understand. Standing next to you I sense spirit's energy. You're wandering. You see the shadows."

"I know. I know. I keep trying to be in the here and now. No one says how hard it is. Jen-Zen died three, I mean four or maybe six months ago. I'm not sure anymore."

"I know you want to believe it's her. But don't close your eyes to other possibilities."

What's that supposed to mean?

Tomas waved at Red Hawk, who put his hand up signaling for him to wait five minutes.  Red Hawk said to Brad, "Let me hold your hands. This may help ease your mind."

Brad felt a wave of static electricity that traveled from the Indian's hands, to his arms and up to his neck. Then a slight chill ran down his spine. As the chill subsided he felt a sense of calmness. 

Red Hawk let go of his hands, put his palms up and said, "In time clarity will come."

Jen-Zen wrote the same thing about clarity.

As Red Hawk walked away, he felt tempted to call after him, "Hey, how'd you know she wrote about the very same thing?"

A high pitch whistle blew.

Relieved to have client work to do and a break from the illogical, Brad walked over to the survey lot. He set up the Nikon 35 MM camera and photographed the archaeologists sifting through soil, separating piles of shell fragments and pottery shard. Leanne's boss, Tomas pointed at the boulders on the horizon, saying they'd make a nice backdrop for the cover of the brochure.

Walking towards the boulders, he noticed a crow who'd been pecking the ground took off, soaring high in the air making circles above him as he hiked up a narrowing path.  Golden shrubs and grasses hugged the base of the hill and grew scarce towards the top.

Looking up at the boulders rust and black colored mineral grains resembled eyes and eyebrows; jagged cracks looked like ears and gaping mouths. Brad started to take a picture, but a crow squawked distracting his concentration.  Goosebumps formed on his neck and arms.

He stared at the crow and the face-like rocks and headed back down the hill, sensing if he photographed the boulders, shadows would have appeared, but they weren't his to photograph. Why that knowledge came to him he didn't understand.

Something tingled in his side.

He remembered Jen-Zen's poem, "SOUL SENSES WHAT THE BODY DOESN'T".

And just what is that supposed to mean?

No answer came.

Meandering down the path, golden grasses swayed as he walked past them.  He licked his index finger and held it up to the wind. It was coming from the east, behind him. The wind picked up speed as he went down the hill, almost as though it was following him.

Jen-Zen said, "THE WIND ON MY SHOULDERS."

He whispered, "My love you are the wind, the wind on my shoulders." I wish you could still hear how beautiful your words sound."

A whistle blew four long notes, followed by three short ones. Brad jogged to the survey lot.  When he approached the crew Tomas said, "Indian Burial our work's done for now."

Two hawks sat on the boulder faces, like sentry guarding their post.

Red Hawk lit a match. The small flame touched the sage. Smoke billowed from it, tingling Brad's nostrils.

***

(This is Chapter Six from my novel, Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries published by Synergebooks.com.)