Spin Half

by Ren Sakurai

Prologue

Sergio

Seventeen years ago

The old, rickety truck, piled high with tents and food and cooking gear, stinking of burning oil and a decade of sweat absorbed into the grease-stained seats, climbs higher and higher through the rain up the rocky, green Urubamba Valley. It shudders and creaks going around the tight curves.

It is a dismal day, but at least we are out of Cusco. In Quechua, Cusco means “navel of the world”; I have often thought that my ancestors aimed a little too high when they named it—and on the wrong side of the body.

Maybe it is the visit to my grandmother’s house yesterday that has stirred these unpleasant thoughts. She had me sit in front of a bowl of coca leaves to perform a reading, which I had refused for years out of superstition; I feared what she would say.

But I had a moment of weakness yesterday. I knew it would please my grandmother greatly if I indulged her, so I did.

It started out well enough, with her prediction that six more children would be born to my wife, Quya. Our only daughter, Killari, turns one next month; Quya, who has always longed to fill our home with children, would be pleased with the news that Killari will soon have brothers and sisters.

But then my grandmother froze. She looked up from the leaves and tore her gnarled hands from the cup, as if it had burned her. Her blue, cataracted eyes widened and fixed me with a stare that made me feel as though I were a ghost.

Now, it must be understood that my grandmother comes from a long line of Inca paqos, skilled in the art of performing herbal healings, exorcising evil spirits, and foretelling one’s future by various methods, including reading tea leaves. So I think it is understandable that her reaction alarmed me.

Despite my repeated prodding, she refused to continue with the reading, nor to even say anything further to me. She went so far as to claim she forgot about an appointment and left me sitting there, alone and bewildered at her kitchen table, staring into a bowl of tea leaves that foretold a future only she could decipher.

And so, here I am now, in a foul-smelling truck crowded with porters and gear, with an unhealthy quantity of negative energy surrounding me. How can it not? I have never witnessed my grandmother refusing to finish a reading, not for any of the dozens I have witnessed her perform. What did she see in my future that would cause such a reaction?

I reach for the gold medallion hanging inside my sweater and seek its reassurance by running my fingers over the star-shaped emblem etched into its face. Passed on to me by my grandmother through our ancestors, generation upon generation, the medallion reminds me that the earth endures, regardless of the trivialities of humankind, and that everything must balance out in the end. I just hope the imbalance of my negative energy isn’t enough to cause Pachamama—Earth Mother and giver of life—to unleash her wrath.

I could make some pretext to abandon the trek. It would fall to Pidru to be head porter. He has far less experience than I do and exhibits a sullen reticence I feel does little to motivate a team. But he could be lead if it came to it. I could feign sickness. Or I could simply tell the men the truth and say I fear my negative energy would endanger the team. I could say that Supay, the god of death, has spoken through my grandmother and that his words, though veiled, foretell some unknown tragedy.

I shouldn’t be on this trip.

Or maybe that is exactly what Supay wants. Maybe the act of my leaving would bring about whatever tragedy is in store for us. Maybe Pidru would lead the men over a cliff or into some other danger I would have easily recognized.

I have found there is no arguing with Fate. She will always win. If you step in one direction but change your mind and step in another, Fate will have already predicted it.

But I wonder if she knows about the rantiy, that sacred ceremony of the Incas known now by only a few and practiced by even fewer.

I just hope I won’t have to use it.

~

The third night. In March it rains without end, and tonight it falls hard enough to require one of the porters to get up every fifteen minutes to thrust a pole against the tent’s roof where the rainwater has pooled.

It has already been a long night, when a chorus of cracks split the air. Then there is a great rushing sound, like that of a train, and with it comes a dread that seems to build from my feet upward until it fills my whole body. Silence for a few seconds, then a hysterical wailing of many voices.

The men are up and hurrying to pull on pants and jackets. I join them outside the tent, where a dozen beams of light flash this way and that on the other side of camp. When we get there, it is clear we have a catastrophe on our hands. Four tents have been swallowed by a hillside of mud, rocks, and trees.

Four tents: That means eight hikers!

Nauseating panic threatens to erupt from my chest. The smell of dirt and rain engulf my nose and mouth. All I can do is join the rest of the team and frantically dig with my bare hands. With each thrust I am both hopeful and desperately fearful that I will touch flesh. My greatest wish is that the small Japanese boy will not be among those buried.

The two tents on each end are still partially exposed, as if the earth had tried to swallow them but decided to spit them out again. It doesn’t take long before we reach a hiker from each of the two tents—both are men in their thirties, one American, the other Japanese. Both are alive and conscious. The American sits on the ground, dazed, mud-caked, and gasping for air. When he can finally breathe again, he asks for someone named Amelia.

“That’s his wife,” says one of the other hikers with a British accent. “They were sharing a tent.”

The Japanese man has caught his breath, and, alternately spitting mouthfuls of mud, pleads with us to find his son. “He was sleeping right there!” He points to the muddy hole from which we pulled him, one corner of the tent poking up from the ground. “Please find him,” he begs. He drags himself to the tent and begins clawing at the dirt with his hands.

This causes us to dig even more furiously. I lose two fingernails after scraping them against rocks buried in the mud.

Someone produces shovels to speed up the digging, but it is still almost an hour before we can reach the child and the American man’s wife, and another hour after that before we uncover the other two tents and pull the remaining four bodies free of the mud: another American woman who always wore her hair in a multicolored scarf; a thin monk wearing a crimson robe and a shaved head now crusted with dirt; Nadine, a French woman whose name I know because she joined the men last night in drinking several rounds of chica de jora; and, the one pulled last from the mud, an American man with hair the color of fire, known by the porters as having a sharp tongue and angry demeanor, with a withering stare that seemed to dare you to cross him. Even in death his eyes remain open, staring through flecks of earth to the stars, as if he stares beyond this world and into the next.

We lay them all on a tarp spread on the ground in the dining tent. The surviving hikers and all the porters who can fit gather around as the rain beats steadily against the canvas roof. I prefer to stand outside in the rain, perhaps in self-punishment. I have sent Umaq and Pidru to Aguas Calientes for help, although it is known by all that there is no help that can now be given. My heart weeps at the sight of these six lifeless souls.

A silence descends upon our camp. I have to think this is my doing. It was I who brought the negative energy to the mountain. And Pachamama returned it with a vengeance.

Six people. I am not one to believe in coincidence, and this is no exception. One for each of my unborn children.

It is the sight of the small Japanese boy that rouses me from my horror and spurs me to action. I clutch my medallion to my chest and raise my head, opening my eyes to let the rain fall into them, perhaps as penance for what I feel is my own doing.

If the god of death, Supay, has seen fit to take these hikers from the earth to punish me, then it is to Him I must appeal . . . no matter the consequences.

Part 1

Jacob

Chapter 1

Sick

Jacob

Present Day

Beautiful, white-hot noise—that’s all I care about right now, the pop of the snare, the tsk-tsk-tsk of the hi-hat, the thump of the kick that you can feel—actually feel—in your chest. I swear the drums are doing it all on their own, as if they’re playing me instead of the other way around. Over and over I keep thinking, that’s why it’s called a groove, because once you’re in it you couldn’t pull yourself out if you tried.

I sit in my usual spot behind the skins, smelling the stale cigarette smoke baked into the walls of this dive, tipping back cheap rail drinks to keep the buzz going. The Anchor Inn ain’t a fancy place: small, dark, always smelling of puke and wet cardboard, the kind of bar where your shoes stick to the floor, where you’d count yourself lucky if your glass was halfway clean and your barstool didn’t have beer, gum, or worse stuck to it.

From my vantage point on the drum throne I amuse myself by watching two women in thick, clown-level makeup and hair-sprayed dos fawn all over two guys wearing thick, fake-gold chains dangling from thick, meaty necks topped with thick, mindless, Cro-Magnon skulls. I recognize most of these people from around the ‘hood. I think I even worked with one of them guys down at Domenico’s Garage, back when it was still called as such, back when I was a kid and gullible enough to think the world wasn’t such a bad place to live in, before all the bad luck hit me.

Tonight, I’m doing fills that come out of nowhere. Even my buddy, Cecil, who normally keeps his eyes closed most of the set, gives me a look that tells me I’m playing out of my goddamn mind.

Rufus and Ty, they’re too full of themselves to even pay attention, except of course if I fuck something up. Then they’re all about the rhythm section. They ain’t the greatest musicians themselves. Rufus, the singer, he just likes to hear his own voice. It’s decent enough, but less of one than he thinks. And Ty is pretty handy with the axe, but he’s more showman than anything. See him in one set and you think he’s a musical genius; one more set and you realize he’s got exactly one sound and no more than two different riffs he solos with on every song.

I’ve been playing with these guys for a couple years now. Fillet of Soulmate is our name, and we do this thing called Cecil’s Blues Jam every Thursday night. Tonight, Cecil, the jam’s eponymous bass player, is half in the bag as usual but still manages to drop some decent bass lines and say some funny shit to the audience between songs.

I end another fill with a crash that we all hit with such perfect timing that it sends a chill down my spine. We’re tight tonight, but I’ve come to be wary of anything that seems like it’s going my way, because experience tells me that bad luck ain’t far behind. I listen for the sound of it in my ears. I can hear bad luck coming, sometimes right while it’s happening, sometimes just before, this crackling sound, like trees snapping at their roots. I’ve come to dread that sound and find myself listening for it, waiting, expecting it to be around every corner. It keeps me on edge.

We finish up a John Lee Hooker cover called “I Hated the Day I Was Born” to some scattered, half-hearted applause that makes me wonder if these people were even paying attention or if they were too busy indulging their hormones. Whatever. I ain’t here for the accolades. I’m here to get drunk and to forget who I am for a night.

Cecil says, “All right, now let’s hear from the crickets,” which raises a few drunken laughs, then we launch into our set-closer, an original called “Sick,” words by Rufus, chords by Ty. I just make up whatever drum parts I feel like; same with Cecil for his bassline. Cecil and me, like rhythm sections the world over, we never get a single shred of credit for it. But whatever, it don’t bother me none. It ain’t like I need the money. I don’t particularly enjoy what I do for a living, but it makes me a decently well-off man. It’s crazy to think about where I started compared to where I am now, a self-made man with a net worth of around $12 million, beach houses in Rio and Cypress, a ski chalet in the Swiss Alps (and I don’t even ski), a two-million-dollar townhouse along with several block-style apartment buildings in Queens, and connections all over the world who are more than willing to do business with me.

Near the end of the song, I switch to open hi-hat, that sibilant she-demon of a cymbal that sounds more like a nail gun firing repeatedly into your brain than a musical instrument. We build the last few bars until it feels like we’re about to shake the whole building down on top of us in a shower of beams and plaster.

We stick the landing with a crash that we all hit at the same exact time, probably for the first time ever. I sit there pouring sweat, my chest heaving. It feels like I just attained fucking Enlightenment. But the real reward is that for a few glorious minutes, the music has made me forget the unlucky bastard that I am.

The last chord is still ringing in my ears when I start to hear the crackling, followed close behind by an all-too-familiar pang of dread through my gut. But this time I’m relieved to see it’s only Ty messing with the cord on his guitar which is causing some kind of static to ripple through his amp. I consider that bullet dodged—while recognizing that it’s just a matter of time before the next one comes whizzing around the corner.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should explain where that crackling came from and how it’s connected to my bad luck. And before that, you’ll need to know all the things that got me to where I am now: how I was buried alive, my quest for supernatural powers, why I sent my best friend to a monastery in the Himalayas, and how there’s a Mexican ghost somewhere in South America who wants to kill me.

Chapter 2

Little Bro

Jacob

You might say it started out accidentally. My parents were both dead-beats, and seeing as how they didn’t give a shit one way or another if I was at school or out robbing banks, I came and went as I pleased. There was no such thing as an allowance in our household—probably because there was no such thing as money, neither—so if I wanted something, I had to get it myself. At the age of eight, the two big things I cared about were candy and fireworks. Mostly candy, but come July, I was all about lighting shit on fire.

The rest of the year, it was candy time. I’d pick a convenience store or a grocery chain, walk in wearing a long jacket or bulky sweatshirt, and walk out with a big bag of M&Ms or Reese’s shoved down my drawers. Once, I even walked out with an entire frozen pizza. That was some cold shit to carry, which I did by sliding it up the back of my sweatshirt then tucking it partially into my waistband. My back was frozen solid by the time I made it out of there, but it was worth it. That was the first time I’d ever earned myself a full meal, and I guess you might say it gave me a little taste of independence, pun intended. By age ten, I felt like I was my own man, and, by God, nobody but yours truly was going to tell me what to do.

That’s when I met these two guys, Charles and Reggie, who introduced me to the life I currently live.

It went down in a convenience store in Flushing called the Fastlane, where I just happened to have the biggest bag of Twizzlers ever invented shoved down the front of my drawers. I was on my way out, when the owner, this guy with a thick accent—I don’t know from where, but he damned well wasn’t from Queens—comes up to me and says, “Hey, kid, what you got down your pants?” Someone says that to a ten-year-old, and you can bet that every customer in the store is automatically thinking “child molester,” which is why I favored that particular location for stashing the stolo. I mean, it ain’t like he’s going to go feeling me up in that region. And I’d practiced this whole innocent routine about how I was born with oversized balls and how I was super embarrassed about it. I’d pretend to get all upset and even start crying a little. I had this image in my head I’d think about to start the tears a-flowing: this stupid commercial I saw about this one family sitting around a fireplace with a Christmas tree overflowing with presents in a nice big house where everyone seemed to love each other.

But the storeowner wasn’t having none of it. He said he saw me put that bag of Twizzlers in my pants and to give that damn thing back or he’d call the cops.

That’s when, out of nowhere, two guys came up behind him wearing ski masks. One of them—Reggie, I learned later—carried this big-ass Beretta, which he shoved in the owner’s face and said, “Get your ass back to the register! Now!”

The owner, now with his earlier malice replaced by panty-shitting fear, complied and emptied out the register. The two masked men were about to take off with the cash, when one of them—who I’d come to know as Charles—says to me, “You better go, little bro, before the cops get here.” That’s what he called me: “little bro,” which felt pretty good to me because it implied he was my “big bro.” In my ten-year-old brain, it made me one step closer to that big family with the fireplace and the Christmas tree.

So I ran out of there and followed them two guys. It was pretty hard to keep up at first because they were hauling some serious ass, and me with that bag of candy bulging from my jeans. They went down these alleys and side streets for a couple blocks, but then I caught up to them when they slowed down, took off their masks, and started walking. It was a bitch of a day out, and it felt like there was a faucet hovering above me and all that came out of it was a river of pure sweat. They didn’t know I was there at first, but then the one guy, Charles, turned around and laughed, like he was both amused and impressed I’d kept up. He had a deep voice, but nice sounding, like you’d want him as your best friend. They let me walk with them.

“You all better now, little bro?” Charles asked.

“What you mean, better?”

“Wasn’t you crying back in the store?”

When you’re ten, you don’t want nobody to think you’re a cry-baby, least of all two bad-asses you just saw rob a store.

“That?” I said, laughing a little. “That shit was just an act, man.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I do that so I can get away with … “ I pulled the Twizzlers our of my pants. “ … this.” I held it up proudly, because, see, look, you two bad-asses, I’m one of you guys.

“Nice work,” said Charles, nodding.

He was this clean-cut-looking guy, six or seven years older than me. He smiled and nodded whenever I said something—a first for me. I don’t recall anyone ever giving me any kind of positive attention, least of all my parents.

“Small-time, man,” chimed in the other guy (Reggie, I’d soon find out). “Compared to this shit.” He patted the pants pocket where I could see the bulge where he’d stored the cash they’d lifted.

“Come on, Reggie, give him a break,” said Charles. To me, he said, “How do you do it? The waterworks?”

I shrugged. “I just think of something sad.”

“What you got to be sad about?”

This got me a little embarrassed, because people in my neighborhood don’t talk about their feelings. At least, not unless you waned to get your ass kicked.

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Come on, we cool, ain’t we?”

I shrugged.

“Lay it on me, little bro.”

We were in a small park now, with dry, cracked dirt where there was supposed to be grass. I kicked a rock and watched it skitter down the path.

“Just this one commercial,” I said. “It’s about this family in this swanky house with a nice Christmas tree all decorated with white lights and shit. And there’s candles burning all over the place, and there’s this family with a mom and dad and kids sitting around a huge brick fireplace, and they’re opening presents and laughing and shit.”

I looked up at Charles, wondering if he’d think I was a wimp. But he nodded and smiled.

“I feel you. Go on, man.”

“Well, it’s like they, you know, love each other and shit. Like they don’t got nothing to worry about.”

“What was it for?” Reggie put it.

“What do you mean?”

“The commercial. What was they selling?”

“Shit, I don’t even know, man.”

Even if I don’t remember what the commercial was selling, that image got me crying every time, because that’s what I wanted more than anything in life. And not only for myself. I swore that if I ever had a family, that’s what Christmas would look like in our house. I’d find that video and go through that son-of-a-bitch frame by frame to make my house look just like that one.

“Damn,” said Reggie, “crying over a damn commercial and you don’t even know what they was selling.”

“It ain’t about the product, Reg,” said Charles. He looked over at me and rolled his eyes a little—but only so I could see. This made my ten-year-old self swell with pride, because we had a secret now, me and Charles: We both thought Reggie was a little stupid.

That made Charles God in my book. It made me wish he wasn’t just my big bro, but my dad. Contrast that with my actual father, whose only interaction with me was to verbally kick the shit of me—and, often enough, not so verbally along with it. I didn’t realize until much later that the concept of “father” could be separated from that of “self-loathing,” because when you’re constantly reminded that you’re a “good-for-nothing”—a favorite expression of dear old Dad’s—it’s hard for an impressionable mind to think of itself as anything but.

Meeting Charles and Reggie was the start of my long and prosperous career in the . . . let’s call it the “auto industry.” We’ll get to the details in a minute. But first, you’ll need to meet that Mexican ghost.