A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing Read online

  Yes, a ship took us. A wind, the sea. But these alone will not get you home. To get you home, you need a star. And someone to listen.

  The dark around me in the night is like the deep of the sea. I step into it like a drowned sailor determined to return to the surface, the hard edge of the coastal wind, and run until the fires below are almost gone. The wind has been my teacher now for years. It knows me.

  1445, NARRAGANSETT

  The Concubine

  He said he knew his way home in the dark.

  The night Wing left, he did so because he thought he could feel his way along the landmasses in the dark. There’s a way the wind feels over land that is not the same as over the sea, he said. And there is a scent to it.

  I do remember knowing land was near, the scent of the pine in the wind, on the long voyage here.

  I remember when the concubines decided not to take the teas that would have kept our wombs clean. I remember because I think of it as the night my son was born. We were on the open sea between a large island and the vast continent we live on now. It would be a new world for us, we decided. And so we went from being gifts to the men of the countries we visited, to giving, of these men, the gift to the expedition of the new generation.

  When I tell you my son was the finest of them, I do not exaggerate out of maternal love. He was the finest of them.

  We are on the sea again, my husband and I. And our son runs the night sky with the guard’s captain. It was decided they should try. Their chances there and ours in a boat alone are one and the same. He has a map his father made him, a trail of stars through the sky that should lead him directly along the coast we traveled. And the teacher he has loved since he was a child.

  Confucius said of this love, when two people are at one in their inmost hearts, that it shatters even the strength of iron or of bronze. And when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids.

  We are going to our deaths, perhaps, but we are not waiting for them. There is no shame in what we try.

  For myself, if this ship is to be our last rest, I am happy. There is no longer any question of me returning to the concubine’s ship. I may not return home in triumph as a wife, but I leave this land that way. Wife, mother, lover. In the dark deep-sea nights of the crossing, my husband and I lose the years between us. In the dark we are young again, and it is my premonition that perhaps eternity could be like this with him.

  I do not pray to my own ancestors, but to my husband’s. My father sold me. I want nothing from his ghost but that he should leave me alone, and not trip my son and his teacher on their voyage home.

  1524, NARRAGANSETT

  Governor of the Chinese Settlement of Narragansett

  They have the skin of ghosts but none of their powers. It’s a little terrifying to look at them, until you realize they cannot reach out and race through the walls to where you sleep, or pull a storm out of their pockets. They have the one shape, not many. Their language is a little difficult to understand, all of the sounds different and they seem to slip over the ear. There is no joy in their discovery I can see. It may be they are under the rule of a bitter king who has forced them out.

  They seem ill-equipped, and you do not equip an exile. You give them a horse that will die near the border, a ship that can sail out of sight but not much farther. They arrived in a single ship—that suggested a lack of planning.

  I was not prepared to be so interested in them.

  They appear to have almost no sense of anything like our sciences. It is interesting that they resemble ghosts as much as they do, given they have not the slightest awareness of either our chi or even their own. In this, they are like the opposite of ghosts, so alive it has made them numb.

  We watch them unobserved. Our patrols unnoticed, our settlement unknown to them.

  The Narragansett have named them already, call them the Wampeshau. I cannot help thinking there is a sign in it. All the years our people have waited, all the expeditions that have left, nothing has returned to us except them.

  The country of the Wampeshau is not unknown to us, my father tells me before our meeting with them. And when we do go to their settlement, and are made welcome there, we are shown their map.

  It is not even close to our map in showing our lands. I try not to laugh at their indication of a deep inland sea where I know the people of the plains to live, where we have traded horses and copper. I do not even attempt to make it clear I am a member of something besides the Narragansett tribe, who have begun to marry with our children.

  My grandmother was a concubine in the fleet of Admiral Zhen Wen, and my grandfather a king in a distant land who she served as a matter of her service, honorably. I have from her a necklace of ivory he gave to her, said to come from the enormous beasts that ran his country, made of their white tusks. My skin is darker than some of my generation, but it matters less. I have the appearance of a Wampanoag, taller and darker, my hair as straight as theirs.

  For a hundred years, our settlement has waited for a sign from China without fail. This morning we saw this ship, and thinking it was the return of the fleet, loaded our boats with flowers and wine. When we drew close and saw that it was not a red-sailed junk, we still greeted them with cheering and hope in our hearts, but our shouting nearly stilled when their white, white faces peered from inside the odd ship.

  They did not speak any of our languages.

  There will be no fleet’s return. I can feel it in my dead heart at the table. My father and I both admire the map greatly, for the appreciation of our guests, but I know he, as I, hides laughter and grief. In it is a story of our lives, reaching past my birth and death at once. I will never greet emissaries from my father’s country. The traditions we keep here, the sciences we have kept alive, our new discoveries, all at once seem to me shuttered and mute.

  The Wampeshau admire my town. They marvel at the roads. Their leader is a man named Verrazzano. How? I want to ask him as he walks the road. How is it possible? But it isn’t for me to know. It isn’t for me to think of, in this hour. I want to know if there was news in his country of our fleet, even though it is clear from his face that we surprised him. I want to know if the rumor could be true, that Wing and his teacher have never touched down, and can be seen sometimes in the sky above us, never to return to the earth below. I want to know this and more, but for now there is the road, made of the belly of our old ships, and the sea, admitting, after all this time, just this man and his one boat. They do not even have supply ships alongside.

  He eyes our women curiously as they wait in line, greeting him. In another time they would have gone to his boat for the use of he and his crew. But this is no longer our way. This is not how we honor the memory of our settlement’s first mothers.

  He and his men look like scarabs in their metal suits, and there is a sound like swords clattering as they move. We turn from the women’s salute in the fierce light of the midday, and make our way back to the shore.

  1846

  WEST

  BY BENJAMIN WEISSMAN

  West

  In late spring three covered wagons crept sluggishly up to a semi-thawed Convict Lake, and a party of five, three men and two women—or was it two and two-thirds women and two and one-third men, since one of these people, Twyla, switched back and forth several times through each day—stepped out of their wagons and settled in for the night. They were a happy bunch in their rust-colored garments, a result of communal washing in iron water. The wagon covers were old and droopy, with the hoops protruding in sets of threes like ribs on a dying giant.

  As the sun sank and the sky lit up in an explosion of guava pulp and whipped cream, their bone-dry horses, Moon, Ten Bananas, and Cantankerous Bastard, slurped the icy lake water like it was equine happy hour. Alpenglow cast the landscape into a pink fizz. Pointy, snow-covered Mt. Morrison, a 14,000-foot peak, towered above them, and parts of it could be seen reflected in the clouded,
half-iced lake.

  I’m going to make spaghetti for dinner, unless someone objects, said Raymond, a perpetually stooping, seven-foot-tall, forty-year-old man with a giraffe neck, a big honking nose, and a protruding Adam’s apple.

  Lily, his wife, a short, muscular, garlic-colored, garlic-tempered woman of thirty, wanted meat but she wasn’t going to say anything. The last time they’d eaten crow cobbler or squirrel succotash was weeks ago in Nevada. Lily took a swig of whiskey and rubbed her belly. This non-meat diet, she said, and then screamed, wasn’t good for ladies who were preparing their wombs to make strong healthy babies. She raised the back of her hand to her head, closed her eyes, inspected for a fever, and then whispered under her breath, I just can’t stand this anymore.

  It was urgent that iron be in her blood now, and she turned in the direction of Gore, maybe because his name rhymed with ore. Also because Gore was a tall, blond, castrated, semi-reformed sex-offender gentleman traveling with them, a sensitive, literate fellow, a Melville scholar who was writing a personal essay entitled “Bearded Duo,” who suddenly took on the appearance of a butcher shop dinner to her. Why is swine the coveted meat we dream about, Lily sang to herself, la-la-la, mood swerving toward delirium, when you got Gore standing there looking quite steak-ish, like the hot link man, who will be perfectly adaptable as hash and tripe chopped up with potatoes, and then there’s smoked jerky to last for who knows how long.

  Their journey west was long. Weeks of protein, she said directly to her axe—a small maneuverable tool with a sweet lily flower burned into the pine handle—which she grabbed, and then ran toward Gore, lifted the heavy blade up into the air, and swung it down across his neck. Gore saw the whole thing coming but didn’t seem to mind.

  A head never came off so easily, like a fish bowl nudged off the end of a table, and it thumped to the ground, spun a half-circle, and came to a stop with the aid of his nose, something her husband Raymond thought comic, which caused him to laugh for one nervous second, and then say, What the hell.

  Lily stood silent, breathing hard, staring at the bloody end of her axe. There was a profound stillness in the air. No one moved, including Gore, who teetered erect and headless. For a moment it seemed very possible that he would bend down and pick up his own head. But he did not. A crow flew by and squawked.

  That settles it, Raymond said, I guess I’m grilling Gore. The reign of vegetarian cuisine had ended, even though Gore continued to stand, a geyser of blood hissing up from his torso like a juicy Roman candle. A few heartbeats later a swaying Gore took a step forward, crumpled at the knees, and fell shoulder first onto the dirt, a cloud of dust poofing up around him. Battle, a small hairy man with tiny ears and a thick beard growing right up to his eyes, walked up to the dead man, untied his boots, and yanked them off, measured one sole to sole with his own: same size, sweet, Vibram soles with steel shanks, and cheerfully switched them.

  Lily dropped her axe, pulled off her blood-soaked garments, asked Battle to burn them once he got a fire started, and walked naked in the direction of the lake. Damn, Battle said to himself though everyone heard him, trembling, eyes cueball-sized, that’s a lot of woman. Raymond stripped Gore of his clothes, carried him over his shoulder and rested him on a log, rubbed lard all over his body, and couldn’t help a protracted stare at his genitals, the castration marks, penis intact. Raymond thought, for some reason, ignorant bastard, that Gore’s package would be missing, but it wasn’t, because every man including all the earth’s sex offenders need something to pee out of. And there it was, pale, at rest. Equally present were his deflated testicles, sewn up cruder than stitching on a catcher’s mitt.

  Smaller thread next time is my advice, Raymond said to himself, a long day, a rough journey, self-talk more available than the two-way variety. Deballed, he said, gritting his teeth, deballed, and shook the confusion, horror, and sympathy out of his head. Raymond pulled out his ultra-sharp knife and poked Gore in the calves several times. Around both thighs he made a dozen incisions, and into Gore’s arms and shoulders he stuffed garlic cloves. He rubbed sage and a random assortment of green needles and leaves all over him so he was good and herby; for aromatic purposes he crammed a few old black-tipped carrots and mushy pears into his trunk. Battle gathered an armload of pine logs and small sticks for kindling, and after much effort a fire was blazing in a round pit.

  You know, I never knew Gore very well, but I can taste fragments of his life in every bite. Is that weird? Twyla said, dabbing her lips with the hem of her dress, like right now I feel him tapping the keys on a miniature piano.

  I know what you mean, Battle said, I see him burning up insects with a magnifying glass.

  Sex offenders, Lily said, spend their whole lives looking for ways to turn their evils around and contribute to society. But Raymond, who ate quickly with both hands, his protruding teeth chomping, his lips smacking and splashing, couldn’t hear her. Raymond, Lily said, it’s deafening, your eating.

  It’s probably best, Twyla said, if we can’t hear ourselves.

  I hear you, and I apologize for this method, but the extra added air flow in the mouth improves flavor exponentially, Raymond said, grinning at his unorthodox pronunciation.

  Really, Battle said, nodding, fascinated. Twyla’s jowls puffed out and her eyebrows thickened. At first it appeared she was vomiting, but she was just manning up for the evening. She burped, threw bones over her shoulder, grabbed more meat. Battle shifted gears, prepared himself for homosexual sex later in the evening with his wife.

  This is a unique situation, Raymond said to Lily, picking up Gore’s head and taking note of the blond stubble that glinted ever so faintly on his cheeks and chin, because it’s usually men who impulsively commit violent crimes and it’s men who succumb to cannibalism.

  Succumb? Where did you come up with succumb? Lily said, disgusted.

  Well, we could have had noodles for dinner. You chose murder and meat. You’re a succumber. I’m making that word up for a new crime of murder and people-eating over chickpea stew and bark mushroom dumplings, and if anyone needs me I’ll be lying under the wagon masturbating. And with that, Raymond pulled out his special flannel rag, touched it to his cheek as his other hand snuck down the open side of his overalls toward his testicular area. In Lily, Raymond’s odd behavior had found support, his proclivities protected. He faked heart attacks regularly for attention.

  Okay, dear, Lily said, but make sure you get all the chowder in the jar, don’t spill, remember we … are … trying … to … make … a … bay … bee.

  The horses, who were all listening, whose vocabularies were extensive and growing daily, sometimes by the minute, took notice because whenever Raymond moved a muscle his odor tripled in strength and their nostrils flared; no living, breathing thing, no microbe or amoeba, could resist such a smell. Raymond seemed to be developing a religion centering around urine. For instance, he believed in something called smelly footprints, whereby he pissed inside his shoes and if he happened to disappear on a walkabout he could be found by Lily or their horse Ten Bananas just from his smell alone.

  But I think it’s interesting, Twyla said, resuming the cannibal conversation, that Lily was the one who took a hatchet to Gore’s neck—Lily, not Battle or Raymond, but Lily, sweetheart, she who wanted to eat a fellow man, she who had the wherewithal to proceed.

  I didn’t hear much objection, Lily said. All I’m hearing are burps and sighs now and a lot of happy bellies.

  True, but guilt is forthcoming, Battle said, there’s no way you can do this without your conscience experiencing some type of primal revolt, there’s nothing worse we could do to each other.

  Women can be just as violent and human-eating as men, Lily said. Don’t think the fellas got some sort of monopoly on cannibalism.

  Well, no women in the Donner party ate people, Twyla said, smiling, leaning affectionately toward Lily, only men.

  Times change, sister, Lily said, and the two women bumped shoulders, raised their hands,
and high-fived. At that instant a set of dark fir trees swayed wildly in the wind like finger-wagging judges.

  After dinner they stared into the fire. A pack of coyotes yipped in the distant beyond. We are surrounded by darkness, Battle said, as if a sermon were forthcoming. Out there, pointing over his shoulder, is the void.

  I’d rephrase that, Raymond said from underneath the wagon. We are inhabited by darkness, heart and soul. To return to one of the great philosophical questions man faces, we ate our friend Gore.

  Well, he wanted to be eaten, Twyla said, her voice rising in pitch, softening back to her womanly self a bit, beard waning, lips thickening, shoulders narrowing. Why else would he yell eat me to those roughnecks who were hassling us back on the trail?

  Good point, wife, Battle said, and why did Gore taste so good? Answer that. It’s not like we lowered ourselves to cannibalism. I think we chose a seldom-traveled high road. And from somewhere very far off someone handed each of them a slice of apple pie.

  Raymond remained under the wagon listening to the debate. The idea that he was married to such a violent woman stimulated the crap out of him. He banged his forehead against the rear axle. I’m succumbing, and with that, two white jets roped into a spotty mason jar, followed soon after with snoring.

  Even though Battle had all the polysexual wonders of the world with Twyla, which needless to say included amphibious genitalia that did everything but fold clothes, he had a secret crush on Lily, or at least he was mesmerized by her monolithic ass. She stood on top of her wagon wearing a brassiere, period, sans lower garments, legs planted wide, arms akimbo, airing out the flesh before bed. Lily was thought to be a tumor in her mother’s uterus; when a doctor discovered that the mass was actually a little girl, he said she’d be an ugly little thing. Lily—born at home, pushed out onto the living room floor on newspapers—rotated half a circle, climbed down off the wagon, meaty buttocks flexing and churning like a steel machine, Lily’s monster ass, the cheeks like two round hostile comedians, taunting the world, with a deep dark ravine down the center.