Matthew Goering
Fiction Writing Workshop

     He told me his vision in detail.  "Desert and Fire," he said, and him riding a white stallion over a barren mountain pass.  The woman waiting for him in peace, open arms, wrapped in a buffalo robe and dancing a silent prayer for his spirit.  We drove onward and his vision unfolded in his old, tired eyes, reflected off the dust on the dash of his old truck and I thought to myself "I'd be riding a Palomino."
     He finished.  Sat for a moment.  "What do you think?"  I didn't know.  "A vision's a powerful thing, follow it, man."  I'd missed the last part - thinking horses instead.  Shit, I wonder what happened after the woman.
     Sand blew against the sun-bleached Ford.  Jerked it across the road.
     "I'm going to need some gas." he mumbled.  Pointed at a rundown station across the asphalt.  Boarded windows.  No life.  Door ajar amidst the faded baby blue exterior.  A Discount Liquor, Wine, Beer sign hung perilously, long since devoid of it's neon life.  
     "I've seen this before."  He pulled into the lot.  Gas pump knocked from rusted bolts.
     "Looks closed."
     "It's the beginning."  He sat staring at the empty window, two proud feathers from a fallen hawk hung from a Native image of a faceless man crying at the sun.  His eyes changed blank.  He was gone sitting there beside me.  I didn't understand.  Lost in a pickup.  "Beginning? Beginning of what?"
     His eyes spun to mine, burning a hole in my ignorance.  His braids followed, straining to escape the red bandana.  "Mine, Teaman, my beginning.  This here is my vision."  He pointed to the window, to the faded red man on his knees calling to us from the tanned hide, the tattered
fur, the feathers.  My heart fluttered in sudden realization.  I had to breathe.  I felt a flash, felt the vision, his power. Saw his grey-blue eyes focusing on a world I couldn't see.  Felt the truth thick.       "Willy," I whispered.  I got no answer, studied his face and saw inevitability surround him with each breath.  Finally I looked at him, quick-tapped the windshield with my ring finger and said, simply, "follow it."  He smiled, popped the old truck into gear and roared out onto the desert road. Forgot the gas. The Ford growled its presence beneath the hot, blue desert sky, turning the heads of the slithering voyeurs perched upon fenceposts and hiding beneath rocks. He drove, counting the sage and singing for the dust devils, watching a world pass by that knew where we were going and did not give a damn where we'd been.  Just another Ford.  Just another vision.  
     As we drove I could sense his inner turmoil and his incredible clarity.  The vision held him in a suffocating grip, spoke through him.  Told him which moon to chase, which star would fall.  We drove onward in silent madness.  Split the sunrise.  He spoke, finally, from the darkness into the light, red earth dancing in the headlights and the sun.  "The Spirit guides me strong," He asked me if I felt it too.  I shivered.  He knew.
     I watched the storm on the horizon as we drove.  Lightning burning the clouds.  I was encompassed with a strong jealousy, an awe, that he had been chosen, not me.  I was the one with dreams.  I was the one with nightmares.  I had sought visions, tempted a death which grew much too familiar, and then Willy tells me "Desert and Fire" and a woman dancing for his spirit. The Gods didn't choose me.  I wasn't surprised.  I watched the clouds churn, build, gather, fill with the wind like a shredding sail.  I could smell the rain shrouding a plateau, running over ancient graves.  Noticed a rock jutting from the dust, twisting upwards in a serene and sensuous form, radiating the beautiful red of the coming night, of the dawning day.  I looked closer at the
stone, the body, I felt the rhythm.  Recognized a familiar face.  Thought, "There's the devil dancing in a quiet groove".  Willy mumbled beside me.  Mumbled something over and over.  He talked night, talked fast, talked so I couldn't understand.  Talked so I did not want to understand. I watched a tumbleweed play and laugh in a gentle breeze of sand.  Felt the earth spin. Whispered through breath, "This is crazy.  This is too real."I watched the devil slip away behind us in the side mirror and wondered if Willy had felt his kiss as well.   
     Suddenly Willy slowed the truck as a jackrabbit bounded into the road, froze in the headlights, and then dashed in fright and excitement under an abandoned wreck on the shoulder. Black with rust.  Maroon with soot.  Filled with sifting sand seeking refuge from its mother.  The jackrabbit found safety.  I could not.
     The truck stopped and Willy grinned his lazy smile.  Pointed.  "Look, Teaman.  Can you see it too?"  I stared, trying to make sense of anything.  Said "My God" and got no answer. Realized God was here. I needn't call out its name to touch its flame screaming towards us in a dream of white fire.  They were all here and playing among the rocks with one another.  Playing with my mind, dancing like the devil, dancing with me.  The light screamed down the ditch in a tempest of the spirit world, tearing up the fragile grass and the sun-bleached fenceposts in a flurry of wind and speed.  They raced towards our truck on either side of the road.  Spheres of blinding white firing flame into the black of night.  Lighting up the asphalt, draining the color from our faces.  Pale.  Helpless.       
     "Motherfucker."  I thought I was watching the end screaming towards me.  Saw the dream fires leap onto the road, criss-cross into opposite ditches.  Felt his hand settle on my shoulder.  Heard his calming voice, looked into his white face, and saw he was scared too.  Saw he was enjoying it.  "We keep breathing life.  Don't worry, man."  I Felt his sureness.  The two
lights shot by the truck on each side.  Heads turned.  I could feel the heat through my door.  My window cracked.  "They will show me where to go.  They will sing me a song."  They ate my fear alive, hit the railroad tracks and launched into the sky.  Fought for a star.  Faded into darkness and silence.  A lone coyote scampered into the road, looked into the headlights, starving.  Red eyes bore into my own.  He growled, took a step back, then leapt into the ditch. Into the dark. Into the cold.  Kinship.    
     I glared up out the window.  "Jesus H. Christ.  Willy, let's go.  Let's just run, hide from whatever's happening here.  This is getting too strange.  I don't need this. I don't need your vision."  Willy just sat there in silence.  Panic seized my heart. "Godamnit, Willy!  Go!  Fuck visions, Willy,  I'm scared!  I don't know what's going on!  I don't understand any of this shit!" He looked at me.  Said in too calm a voice, "Neither do I, Teaman."  I tried to relax, pleaded, "please."  I got no answer, turned to my friend.  He sat still behind the wheel, gone again.  I closed my eyes, frustrated, and saw him crying over a dying fawn.  Panic crept slow.  A tear rolled off his cheek and down a crease in his weathered face.  I repeated "Please." He answered. "No.  No, Teaman.  No turning back.  Not now, not then.  There are no choices, only a path behind the next sea sinking like ice into the heart of past.  We can't turn back."  His voice quivered, "Can't turn back."     
     "Fuck that, Willy."  I shook.  Couldn't take it any longer.  Wasn't my vision, it was his. Fear bit into my soul, whimpering at the blue sky, the black night.  "Can't you feel it?"  Yes. Yes I could feel it.  This vision.  I could feel it too well.  I saw the fawn rise in the reflection of the windshield, blood on its tongue, and stagger into a valley of thorns.  There was no Palomino here, no Indian woman.  Just fear and fire consuming a thousand screaming dreams.  Had I missed that much?  Had he?  It was so dark. My heart beat a powerful drum in my ears and yes, I
felt it.  What was happening to me?
     He turned the truck around slowly, deliberately.  Avoided my stare Ignored my fear, though I knew he felt it.  The sky turned red.  The desert burned.  It was beyond real.  Beyond visions.  I tried so hard to understand, to know where to go.  Nothing more came.  The devil laughed at me in the distance.  Sweat beaded on my face.  We turned off the road, the truck moving over the cracked earth of a long parched lake bed.  Changed from sea to earth in a blink of time's eye.  Drank dry by mastodon bones and boulders dying of thirst.  What was this?  Light looming behind a forest of Saguaro.  Coyotes cried out in frenzy over fresh blood, silhouetted on a hill, paying homage to the moon.  Then I felt them.  I sensed their presence before I caught their shapes synonymous with the desert wind.  Walking, running towards the light in quiet curiosity and seething obsession.  Human shapes who saw it too.  Who, like Willy followed without questioning.  They weren't me.  Weren't us.  I was still so afraid.  I screamed, "Willy, leave!  Leave now!  Get us out of here!  Save me from this, take me away, take me home . . ."
     "Shut up, Teaman."
     "Man, fuck you, Willy."  Rigid fear so strong it hurt, made me cry out in wishful solitude for a savior.  Fleeting hope.  They all walked to the center of the blindness, toward light so strong the paint on the Ford cracked and withered in noxious fumes that made me gag.  They walked into the night.  We drove into the sun.
     "My vision." He smiled.  His braids glowed grey with age and newfound wisdom.  He laughed and his eyes went mad and then he was gone, in the back, sitting in the bed of the truck. Chanting.  Lightning upon his cheek, feathers in his hair.  The faceless red man crying at the sun hung around his thin neck.  His white skin turned brown.  His eyes went black.  I yelled. Pounded on the back window.  He would not hear.  I was alone.  Alone in the dream scape of
another man's mind.
     I saw the door of the truck swing open, felt the desert passing by.  One of them hopped in, looked at me, drove the truck.  I looked closer.  The woman returned my glance, stars reflecting from her pitch black hair.  Dead eyes.  Blank stare.  Open Mouth, red skin, and luminous figure.  My soul screamed.  "You're one of them!"  She nodded, reached out towards me, mouth moving.  My God, her eyes!  She lipped, "It's going to be alright."  But she had no voice, only a strangled groan, loud and constant, choking through blood.  "It's going to be alright."  I wanted to ignore her sound but it was impossible, it cut through like a knife.  "It's going to alright."  Fear gone.  Now terror.  Horrific realizations of things that can't be.  Things that hide in the shadows, waiting in the darkness.  Pouncing.  "It's going to be alright." and a painful growl.  A gasp for a breath of blackness.
     "You're one of them!"  I yelled, pointed, shook my finger useless in her face.  "One of them!"  "It's going to be alright."  "Shut up!  Please!"  "It's going to be alright."  She sounded like death.  I was out of control, the desert went with me.  I cowered back into the tattered door, slapped her away.  "You're one of them!"  Told her who she was.  She knew.  "God help me, please, someone help me!"  Willy chanted unintelligible in the back.  I pleaded again, "Help me" "It's going to be alright."  The desert exploded in my fright and swirled for my survival.
     The truck did not slow.  She began to over take me.  I kicked, scratched, slapped the window.  Screamed Willy's name.  His face was there in an instant, eyes piercing, staring into my own.  He put a palm up to the glass, skin glowing purity.  Spoke to me, "What are you?" and then he was gone.
     I stared into the blackness where Willy had been.  Tried to understand his word.  I felt her hand cover my mouth, still my body.  "What am I?"  My fear froze.  Spirit lifted.  I looked to
the light.  So strong.  Painful.  Still no Palomino.  Had there ever been?  My eyes burned, whites turning red, as we drove into the dream white flame licking the sky, caressing her and holding me.  God.  Only light.  Nothing else.  I felt their jealousy as the Ford took us to the place so many of them longed to reach, laughed at what was mine.  I laughed at them.
     "What am I?"  Not them.  My skin boiled.  Not him.  Roaring so loud I had to strain to hear my mind's eye speak.  Willy's vision or mine?  Still in the cab but the truck was gone.  I felt blindness, not of blackness but of pure white.  Closed my eyes.  It made no difference. Immersed in power.  Swallowed in epiphany.  No, not them.  Not him.  What am I?  More.  "It's going to be alright."  I could hear her talk.  I answered.  "Yes, I know."  Instantly I felt her peace transforming in fear.  Felt her stare, no longer dead but now very much alive, fix upon me, fix upon my confidence.  I tasted her journey into terror.  No more gasps, no more death.  I felt her voice.  Felt her scream at me, "You!  You're one of them!"  Could sense her pull away. Couldn't see a thing.  I spoke, "It's going to be alright."  Knew she didn't understand.  Knew why.  My spirit soared into the rock and clay and sand.  Life opened up within, called to me, spoke to the Teaman secrets of another sort, secrets He cannot share.  Peace, content and burning such as I've never imagined.  Light unfathomable.  The center of a star.  I felt myself erupt and become one in a million fragments of light and searing heat.  I wondered what had become of Willy.  I felt all the pain, all the sorrow, all the laughter, all the rage, and then a wonderful nothing.  "What am I?"  "I don't know."  I was content with the answer.  The vision was clear upon the tip of my tongue.  Not his but mine.  My truth, free and preying like a wolf upon the weak.  I felt myself, it all, rush in a blinding column towards the stars, then fall again to the desert tempest.  The light was gone.  Darkness.  Alone.  Nothing.
     An Indian woman danced for my spirit, wrapped in a Buffalo robe and spreading my
essence over smoldering coals.  I approached her quietly , cautiously, reveling in the majestic mountain stroking the sky, the sweet smell of pine that kissed my sense of smell.  I stood next to a lake beneath a granite strewn boulder field.  The trees atop the mountain gorge twisted in deep breaths for air, dwindled and disappeared at timberline; gave way to snow and lichen.  I looked into the reflection on the lake top, amazed by the parallel world more innocent than the one I was in.  Wondered if that was possible.  I looked at the trees, the sun, the moon, reflected in the clear glass and gasped as the perfect and pristine image changed in the wake of a ripple to darkness.  The Ford sat there silent, far away, alone in a desert valley.  A man leaned against the faint orange paint next to his guitar, rolling a cigarette and chuckling quietly to himself as men who know everything are bound to do.  It was Willy.  
     I stared and felt blackness start to engulf me.  She was instantly at my side, smiling, reassuring, bracing me up.  She did not talk.  Did not say a word.  She wrapped me in her buffalo robe and stroked my damp hair like a mother tending a sick child, comforting.  I regained my composure and she slowly released me and leaned me against a huge pine.  The sweet smell of vanilla emanated from its bark, calming me with nostalgic scent.  The woman walked back to the fire and resumed her dance slowly, leaving me standing there staring and confused.  A crow called out, its caw echoing off the mountain walls.  A spirit called back with a haunting coo.  
     I felt someone emerging from the forest, turned and watched an ancient Indian man grin toothlessly at me and raise his hand in greeting as he approached.  I straightened, waited.  He spoke through a thick accent, scratched at his buckskin,
     "Hello, Teaman.  Welcome to your vision, and mine."
     "It is mine then?"                                 &nbs p;                           
     "Yes, it is.  We could not be here otherwise.  Neither would she."  He gestured to the
woman dancing in a trance.  I'd seen that dance before.  Remembered a rock.  Saw a coyote. "Beautiful place, don't you think?"  He looked at the mountain above, took a deep breath, and ducked swiftly into its shadow.
     "Yes.  Incredible."  I spoke stunned, trying to understand the desert and feeling faint from the altitude. I swayed watching a breath unfold into the thin, cold mountain air and disappear, "And Willy?"  The old man understood.  Answered,
     "He was there for you, though he did not understand it until you left.  He was like the hatchet with which you chopped a path for yourself through the opening in the darkness.  Thank him when you see him again.  He did very well.  Give him this."  He handed me a small, smooth cuneiform image of a bear with raven feathers tied to its back.  "Come, then.  There are some things I must say before you leave again."
     He turned and walked through glimmering mountain dew into the trees.  I followed and soon found myself at a small hut, low to the ground, with smoke seeping out of a shaft in the roof.  A skull with huge antlers and spiral horns stared at me from above the small doorway.  It called out my name.  Asked me, "Why are you called Teaman?"  I looked through the hollow, white eyes and told him I didn't know, didn't remember.  Coffee upsets my stomach.  The bones smiled at that - all teeth.  Genuine.  The Indian crouched through the door and beckoned me in. Told me to sit next to the fire, beneath a bundle of brown flowers hanging from the ceiling. Trophies of hunt and religious idols hung with them.  Kachina dolls stared at me through the darkness as my eyes adjusted to the dim.  The old man pulled something off the wall and sat down opposite me across the fire, smiling at me through the smoke.  He threw a handful of dust into the fire and then packed a pipe as he looked me over and began a chant that drew me into the fire, calmed my raging soul.  Then he spoke.  Slow.  Deliberate.
     "You are an interesting one, Teaman.  I have never seen a white skin here before.  And I have been here a long time."  He slapped his knee gently and laughed, infectious.  I laughed with him, not knowing why.  "Nor have I ever seen one who has spent so much time lost with the devil.  Those who run with vultures often seek visions.  They rarely have them."
     "I don't understand."  I didn't.
     "Of course not, you are a Wasichu, a white man."  He threw a dismissing gesture with his free hand, "Ah, it does not matter.  Just sit and listen for a little bit.  Have you seen Coyote in your journey here?"
     "Yes.  Starving, running from the light."  He smiled,
     "Coyote is an interesting one as well, Teaman. You two have much in common.  I'm not surprised he was called to you in the desert.  You have great power, Teaman.  Much spirit, much soul, much strength.  Like Coyote you are very close to the Creator, the Great Mystery.  I can read your past and see you also have Coyote's curse.  His thievery, his arrogance, his disrespect. You are both creatures of bad luck and trickery."  The old man stopped, lit the long pipe and drew in the smoke, closing his eyes for a moment and speaking again as he exhaled, "Beware of ending up like Coyote, Teaman.  In all his brilliance and power, the coyote's spirit lives in fear, responsible for death and unhappiness and lost souls.  He wanders from one place to another, always running from his past, always looking back over his shoulders to see if anyone follows.  I can see you have lived as Coyote.  So be it.  It is time for you to move on.  I have been sent to you to tell you there are better lives.  Coyote can rise to great heights if he can overcome his own mischievousness, his own self-destruction."  I smiled at his insinuation.  He grinned at me the same grin he had given while emerging from the woods earlier, then startled, as if remembering something terribly important.  "Mmmm!  I almost forgot.  Here, smoke this tobacco.  It is appropriate."  He handed me the pipe, ornamented in carvings and color, "Apache say Coyote is the one who stole tobacco from the sun and brought it to man.  My grandfather told me the great spirit gave the first pipe and the fist tobacco to Coyote to smoke for peace and to make his heart feel good.  I like that story better."  He smiled wide, pointed to me as I inhaled the sweetness, and brushed a white hair from his wrinkled face, "Coyote smokes again, eh?"  And with that he shook his head and let out a tired, wheezing laugh.
     "Beware of following the moon, Teaman.  Beware of becoming the night for the night preys upon the strong and the weak alike and never releases its control.  Howl at the moon, it is your instinct, but do not forget to follow the sun.  Do not forget to follow your heart.  It is through your heart, Teaman, that you will find heaven and paradise.  You will be O.K., I can see it in your eyes.  You will dance with the stars one day, just as Coyote did, and I will be proud to say the Teaman has smoked from my pipe."  He stopped, reached across for the pipe, and smoked in silence for a time.  Then he stood up, handed the pipe to me, and placed a hand on my shoulder.  The smoke calmed and he began to chant.  The same song the woman sang for my spirit out by the coals.  Finally he slipped out of the hut.
     "Sleep now, Teaman.  For you it has been a long day."  His chanting engulfed me, sang from the mountains deep, resonant.  I smoked, sweat, and drifted off into sleep.  Dreamed of the sun.  Dreamed of tears.  Danced with the devil in a quiet groove beneath a familiar rock. Smoked with God.
     I woke again in the desert.  The dust choked me, the engine roared.  We drove along a silent desert road.  He told me his vision.  "Desert and Fire," he said, and a Palomino's grave.  A pack of coyotes yipped and screamed in the distance, fresh blood spilt, kill discovered.  I closed my eyes and found the moon only they and I could see.  We howled together survival and moved
on.