Falling Idols (20 page)

It always comes back to history for you, most history being cyclical, because of the fundamental stupidity of human herds that never learn, or less often the realization that sometimes the old ways really are best. New generations must discover this on their own, why should they take anyone’s word for anything?

Some months ago you first felt it, felt that cold wind blow to you from across the ocean, from Norway, home of your ancestral genes and much that you hold dear. For a few years it’s been going on and you never even knew, until your chance encounter with a small newspaper article, which led you to a more detailed magazine article, which triggered your search for all that you could find on the subject of the Norwegian church-burnings.

A war has been declared, fought mostly in the middle of the night, churches a thousand years old, some of them, set aflame and razed to the ancient ground, burned in the name of old gods once sacred to Viking lips and warriors’ blades. The newly churchless blame it on devil worshippers, poor Lucifer gets dragged into everything, if the pious have no greater sense of their own ancestry than that, then they’re no better than poodles and dachshunds, maybe they really should be burned out. The culprits are musicians in most instances, modern-day sons of Odin and Thor, evidently they’ve had quite enough of missionaries and meddling, would’ve put a stop to it, too, if only they hadn’t been born a thousand years too late.

From across the Atlantic and cold North Sea you cheer them on, their fiery tricks are the vanguard of revolution, the world is about to shake itself down like a tick-infested hound and these are the first true signs, and you’re a natural part of the rest.

Ragnarok is coming.

You hear it on its way, heard it trying to break through into the world a month ago, and the month before, and the month before that, you weren’t ready then but now you are, you’ve remembered everything, now it’s almost the second Thursday of the month again and it all depends on you.

*

So enlivened are you by this final countdown that you decide not to go home, in polls you’ve read wherein people share what they’d do if they knew they had but another day to live, and nobody ever says they would sleep more.

You’re minding your own business when she comes up to you, the way it happens to anyone. You’ve taken a break from your spree of tricks, both feet are aching in their boots. The blistered soles of your feet throb while you sit on the bench at the bus stop, your blisters have popped and feel raw inside sticky socks.

“You look kind of stressed,” she tells you. “Suck you off to relieve some of that tension? Twenty bucks.”

Vitality. She’ll want your life’s vitality, it’s as good as predestined. She can’t be more than fourteen and possibly younger, her body still has that slim, straight look of a boy’s, no curves anywhere, or perhaps it’s poor nutrition.

“Come on, you got a car nearby? I’ll do you there, do you so good your grandpa’ll come. No, wait, if you had a car, like, what would you be doing waiting for the bus?”

“You’re new at this, aren’t you?” you ask.

“Yeah, I’ve got these virginal lips, they’ve never known a man’s thing. Is that what you want?” She’s pouting like a magazine cover, hard little urchin’s face softening beneath a floppy hat, hair snaking from beneath in tangled dark strands and both knees of her jeans are dirty. “Okay, fifteen and we’ll go find somebody else’s car. There’s gotta be one unlocked around somewhere.”

“Do your parents know you do this?”

“Oh yeah, sure, I’m like sending them a postcard every week, ‘Hope you’re fine, I still don’t swallow.’ So what planet are you from, anyway, do they even have blowjobs there?” She rolls her eyes. “Ten, okay? It’s as low as I go.”

“You know what you need?” you tell her, because now you know that you can make a difference in her life, grant it some grace here at the end. “You need a dog.”

“Whoa, no, I’m all, okay, like I’ve done some weird things to get by, but I’m not into animal scenes, you really are a freak—”

You stop her before she can go any further, perpetuate this sick misunderstanding, the idea of treating a fine dog in such a way fills you with nausea, and never mind what the males will do sometimes to an unwary leg, they don’t know any better and you do.

“A pet, that’s all I mean, a protector, and to always love you,” you explain. “They’re a lot more reliable than people.”

“I had a dog once,” she says quietly. “His name was Sailor, and we … we never could hardly go anywhere without him following, he was so good at slipping the gate.”

She’s thoughtful now, you see the distant past overtake her, remake her, she’s no longer the pubescent whore. If a remembered mutt can do this much for her, imagine what Fenris can do to the rest of the world when he gets it in his jaws.

“I’ll buy you another dog tomorrow, all you have to do is meet me at the pet store on Lancaster Avenue. You know the one?”

“A dog.” She can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You wanna buy me a dog.”

“But it’ll have to be first thing in the morning. Later on I’m going to be extremely busy.”

“You. Wanna buy me. A dog.”

“They all know me there. If you want, we could walk over now and look in the window, you could pick one out tonight.”

The girl contemplates this, her mouth hangs open and her eyes roll up, she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. “You are like
the
weirdest guy I have ever met.” She stops, abrupt. “Okay. Sure. Okay. Let’s go look at the dogs, maybe it’ll excite you, something needs to.”

The two of you walk along the street together, you’re much taller than she is, if anybody cares to look she could be your kid sister but of course nobody cares. The members of a wolfpack watch out for one another, but the tendency has been bred out of humans, another reason to give the world back.

“So is this your mission in life, or what?” she asks.

You wonder how to explain it all so she’ll understand, these are not simple principles, you may have to be patient.

“Everything we do makes ripples,” you say. “Like in a pond? You throw in one pebble and it makes ripples, you throw in two or three, then the ripples get complicated, they intersect. So what I do is, I go around throwing pebbles.”

“Right,” she says. “Why?”

“As long as I’m in the middle of the ripple patterns, that should keep me safe.”

“Oh, sure, the ripple patterns, why didn’t you just say so?” You’re really communicating now. “Look, I know that nice leather jacket you’re wearing must not’ve come cheap, but are you sure you can afford this dog?”

You assure her you can, after Ragnarok what use will anyone have for money anyway, filthy lucre will be utterly without value. Flesh and blood will be the currency of the future, and tomorrow’s princes those who have shown an aptitude for dealing in them.

For many years you’ve been hearing about senseless violence, commentators tossing the phrase around as though it were something they were proud of inventing and proud of scorning, above it all. They’re fools at best, at worst traitors to their species, ignorant of the natural order, they must think that deer run from wolves in a spirit of fun, that throats open and entrails spill from zippers, without a struggle. The culling of the weak can hardly be a senseless act, is labeled so only by a species that cherishes weakness, that nurtures it, that protects the weak from their natural fate. It demeans the whole system.

“You’re not Italian, are you?” you ask.

“No,” she says, she’s looking strangely at you. “Would it be a problem if I was, are you prejudiced?”

“Just checking, just curious.” People all around, in windows and in cars, no one sees you or this underage whore, how blind do they have to become before they never leave home at all? “Columbus gets credit for discovering it over here even though Vikings came centuries earlier. They know better, so what’s Columbus Day still doing on the calendar? It just bugs me. Some smart Norwegian needs to restake the claim.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” she says, then you’re looking at her back, she’s turned into an alley all but untouched by light, the bricks and wrought iron gleam with a wet nocturnal sheen.

“Where are you going?”

“Shortcut, this way’s quicker than going all the way to the end of the block. Believe me, I live out here, I know.”

So you follow, the alley slick beneath your boots. She takes your hand like a child afraid of the dark, you hope she doesn’t start up with the propositions again. Halfway along she pivots at the waist, scrawny torso spinning toward you when her fist slams into your stomach in that opening of your jacket, her fist and the small knife she’s holding. You grunt and she stabs you again, lets the blade pull itself out as you lurch back against moist bricks and slide down, her hands plunge into your pockets, deft and sure, they know what they want by touch alone and leave the rest.

Before you can tell her what a mistake she’s making she’s running away with your old name and your money. You sit against the wall, you’re aware of breath and blood, aware of everything but time, you sit until something clicks inside you, it must be after midnight by now, it’s the second Thursday of the month, if only you can hold out a few hours longer.

*

It always comes back to roots for you, in roots lies purpose, without roots how can anyone know which direction to grow? Roots are the human pedigree, ergo one’s destiny, as surely as pedigrees match dogs to duty,
canis familiaris
, a single species but many breeds. Pedigrees point border collies toward herds of sheep, and bloodhounds toward scent trails, while behind them all are the wolves, the beautiful wolves, who lurk in the northern woodlands of deepest night and in the dim bestial memories of those who build walls to keep them out.

Your fleshly grandparents were born in Norway but you’re an American, whatever that means, the answer might be found if you read enough bumper stickers but they don’t mean the same things on cars that are stolen or repossessed, and since you never know who’s driving, you’re better off trusting your roots. You have Vikings in the woodpile, plunder in your blood and Ragnarok in your future, as a heritage there’s a lot to live up to.

They’ve given you courage, these Nordic church-burners across the ocean, obviously they knew more than you at first, being so much closer to the soil of your common roots. With Ragnarok on the way they’re making preparations, you wonder if they too heard the howl of Fenris on the second Thursday of each month, Fenris apparently too weak to claw through into this world.

His howling is to be the beginning of the end, the old Norse legends agree that the trickster and fire demon Loki will slip his bonds, then he and his followers will meet the gods for the final battle and Fenris the mighty wolf born of the trickster Loki will unleash his howl of devastation to come and there’s Ragnarok for you. Of course everyone must die before the earth can regenerate into a new and better place, it’s a necessary sacrifice, but look at most of the people around today and sacrifice starts to seem perfectly reasonable.

You remember hearing these old stories when you thought they were just that, just stories, tales your grandfather told to pass the winter afternoons after your parents no longer wanted you. He would take you for walks in the country, you were quite small at the time, you would help him take his dogs out to chase winter hares and laugh and kick at snow drifts and wander so deep into the forests that the day he fell over dead out there you knew you would never find your way back, late as it was, so you went to sleep instead.

It woke you with its hot breath and rough tongue, you opened your eyes but couldn’t feel your feet, your grandfather lay where he fell although now his big belly was torn open and great steaming heaps of things lay in the snow. The yellow eyes looked upon you as if they knew you, knew everything you were and would be, you’d never seen an animal like this before, never so big nor so black, the dogs were nowhere to be found, and when it took your hand in its mouth you couldn’t feel that either. It tugged you to your grandfather, to the ragged edges of the steaming wound, where frozen hands and frozen feet might be warmed, how it knew such a trick you couldn’t understand. It had vanished before they found you, the two-leggeds, who didn’t believe you anyway. “Where are the tracks?” they asked, and with your drippy hands you pointed at the snow but they wouldn’t see, so you quit talking. They didn’t deserve it.