“Cooksey’s having a meeting in the office,” she said, recognizing the spoken name. “We can go see him later. You want to come watch my program with me?One Life to Live? Jessica and John? And Starr?” She mimed turning on a TV and sketched a screen in the air. She backed away from him making come-hither gestures. A few minutes later they were settled in front of the screen, she in a worn but cozy rattan armchair, he on his haunches leaning against the sofa.
Moie watches the stolen ghosts of the dead people in the spirit box. They seem to be living the ordinary lives of dead people, although it is clear to him that the box is ruled by demons. Sometimes the dead people disappear and a demon appears and shouts and makes noises. As now, he sees a demon come out of a bottle and shout at a dead woman, who smiles at it. The demon flies around her hut making everything into metal, like an axe blade, with sun shining from the furnishings, although they are inside the hut and there is no sun. Then the demon returns to the bottle and the woman speaks of how she loves the demon. Her daughters will never have children, Moie knows. Now a dead person tries to poison a demon dog, but it doesn’t work. The dead person places poison in two bowls, but the demon dog picks the wrong one, and eats, and doesn’t die but instead talks to the man and tells him how foolish he has been-he should have put the poison in both bowls! It’s clear that thewai’ichuranan are not as clever as the Runiya when it comes to killing demons. Now some flashing that he can’t understand, one scene after another so fast he doesn’t know what’s happening, then come the humming, squeaking sounds that always presage the return of the spirits.
The Firehair Woman is talking, as she always does when the spirits are showing in the box. Moie thinks this is part of her worship. He himself can catch spirits in a box, if they are causing trouble in the village, for example, or if there is a bad person around, like a witch or murderer, then he would steal the man’s spirit and lock it away, so his body could more easily be burnt up. But no Runiya would think of talking to them. Only really stupid or bad people leave their spirits behind when they go above the moon, and what can be learned from talking to these? He wonders if these spirits are her ancestors. That would at least make sense, for the Runiya speak to their ancestors all the time, and for this purpose they keep their ancestors’ dried hearts in beautifully decorated pouches hung from the rafters of their longhouses. He wonders if there are dried hearts in this spirit box. Once, the first time she showed him the spirit box, he tried to pry the back of it off with his knife, but she became excited and pulled at his arm. He understood that looking into the spirit box wassiwix for her, and so he didn’t do it.
She is smiling and pointing to the box and talking. She wants him to see something. He looks. In a room of one of thewai’ichura longhouses, two spiritwai’ichuranan are preparing to dopuwis. (There is a louder humming, which always comes when something important is going to happen; he has learned that much.) But he has seen this many times before. The dead spirits are always, always, preparing to dopuwis: they kiss, they rub each other, they take off their stupid clothing, or most of it, and yet they never do anypuwis. Of course, everyone knows that the spirits cannot dopuwis, it is only for the living.
So these dead people spirits are lying down on the platform where they sleep, covered with a blanket, and the dead woman spirit is making noises, similar to what this kind of woman would make in life; he has heard this many times now from the Firehair Woman and Monkey Boy when they dopuwis in their hut. Also Angry Woman and Hairy Face Man do it, but she makes a different sound. Moie knows that the spirits are not doingpuwis, for the woman is not on her knees showing the man the dark folds of heraka to excite him.
In any case, he is no longer able to see them. He can only see a hole in the wall of the longhouse. Awindow is their word for this hole. The humming increases. Now he sees the man and woman again, and it is as if he has passed through this hole. Moie can do this, too, going through the walls, and so he knows that anaysiri, a sorcerer, is somewhere around. Yes, now he sees theaysiri, who has made himself small to go into the spirit box. The Firehair Woman is talking, talking, and Moie wishes she would stop, because this is interesting, for a change. Theaysiri has a pouch in his hands, and Moie knows just what it is, alayqua, a spirit catcher, for he has one himself, although he did not bring it with him to the land of the dead. His is smaller and has bright feathers on it.
Now theaysiri ’s head grows large, showing that he is very powerful, and Moie can see his spirit catcher more closely. He sees that there is a little spirit box attached to thislayqua, in which the sorcerer can see the spirits being captured. He shakes his head, and thinks that thewai’ichura sorcerers must be stupid to need such a thing, since Moie or any decent Runiya sorcerer would of coursefeel when the spirit he was aiming for was captured. But he has to admit it is clever and interesting for theaysiri to come right into his spirit box and show all those watching how he captured the spirits and demons in it. Moie thinks that it is because there are so manywai’ichuranan, no one can tell who is anaysiri, so he shows his power to those who watch the spirit box, in case they have troubling spirits they wish to capture, or if they have an enemy whose spirit they wish to steal and bind in the box, then they would know whom to consult. He is pleased with himself for having understood this; he understands so little of the dead people and their ways. Now there are demons dancing again, and loud unpleasant sounds, and he turns away.
“Do you understand?” Jenny asked again. “They’re going to make a tape of you. Like that private detective was taping Daniel and Lindsay?” She pointed to the TV screen and then mimed a video camera pointing at Moie. “They’re going to make a tape of you, so you can tell your story on TV. Maybe you’ll get famous and be onLetterman! OrOprah!” He looked at her blankly, as he usually did when she had to describe something complicated.
“Oh, God, just wait here a second, okay? I’ll show you.”
She dashed out of the living room and down the hallway to Professor Cooksey’s rooms. To her surprise she found Kevin poking around the office.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Looking for you. Want to go out somewhere?”
“Sure, where?” she said, a little startled. In her experience, Kevin was not one to propose amusing trips.
“Oh, I don’t know. We could go to the zoo. Hang out with Bill Kearney. Play with the animals.” When she hesitated, he added, “We could take the little guy along. He’s probably never been to a zoo.”
Jenny felt a wave of gratitude. That wasso Kevin, she thought. Just when you were going to give up on him he’d do something real nice. She gave him a hug and said, “Sure, I just have to show him something.” With that, she grabbed Cooksey’s Panasonic camcorder from its shelf and checked the tape and battery.
“That’s a fancy unit,” Kevin said. “You sure you know what you’re doing with it?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Jenny. “I lived with this foster family once, this guy, Harold Logan, was like totally obsessed with that programAmerica’s Funniest Home Videos? He would, like, make the kids do stuff, like crash their bikes and fall into pies, dumb shit like that. He was dying to win the grand prize, it was, like, thousands of dollars, and he kept sending tapes to them and never got on the show. Personally I thought it was fixed. Anyway, I was the oldest kid, so he taught me how to use one of these because he thought it would be funnier if he was in the tape. Okay, so he set up this shot with a trampoline they had? He was a big fat dude. The kids were jumping off the porch roof onto the trampoline, climbing out the bedroom window and bouncing off it. That was the setup. Then he comes out of the window and jumps, and the deal was he rigged the trampoline to, like, collapse when he hit it. That was the stupid joke, right? But it didn’t collapse, and he comes off of it, boing, and flies through the air and crashes into the barbecue, which he had going for hot dogs and shit, and it goes over with the table he had the charcoal lighter on, and it spills and it catches him on fire. I mean, fuck, his hair and everything and his wife comes running out and tries to put him out with a pitcher of lemonade that she’s carrying, but he’s still burning, yelling curse words and everything, and finally she put him out with the hose. I got the whole thing on tape.”