Sioux Falls

By David Cumming

A mind-altering explosion in New York City leaves people with strange abilities and a puzzling origin story from the ashes.

"Sioux Falls" can be read either half first. In the Left Part, Yancy Ackerman sets out to understand a mysterious ability with his roommate, Irina Kadmon. Soon they discover not only the truth behind the explosion, but the darkness of addiction, man’s quest for enlightenment and the inevitability of fate. Robert Kilroy — a U.S. Army veteran recounts his tragically murky past while fighting in Okinawa, Japan. While being treated for memory loss and similar mind-altering symptoms at the Laramie House, Robert begins to dig deeper into his past and future. All the while, Robert has visions of a missing boy from the city.

In the Right Part, Akash Khambad has been in solitude for his entire life and suddenly goes missing in New York City. As his contagious illness begins to worsen, Akash’s life is reawakened when he embarks on a curious journey to the end of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Cumming
• Release date: Dec 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9780578175034

Book preview

Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls

By David Cumming

Sioux falls

Acknowledgements

Anne-Marie & David Christopher Cumming, Heather & Paul Kunk, Caroline and Mel Schwartz, Christian, Michelle, Perry Klein, Cynthia Vaeth, and the Andrews and Cumming Clans

With guidance over the years from Jennie Goldfarb, Abigail Freed, Bonnie Gregory, Michelle Christiance, The Andersons, Adam Delp, Andrew Jones, Tess Liebersohn, Amie Phillips, Barbara Linares, Michael Piel, Ian Stafford, Faryn-Beth Hart, Meredith Nein, Micah Rosenblatt, Taylor Sincich, Zahara Zahav, Daniel Feder, Douglas Sharf, Joshua Fleet, Kosta Lagos, Ryan Miller, Sean O’Neill, Meredith Cochie, David Valdez & Marcel Robicheaux

And all those in my tribes on my journey from Clearwater, Gainesville, Baltimore, New York City, Florissant, Ocala, Denver, Nevada City, Big Sur to Boulder.

This story is a fictitious account of the events from my childhood and journeys throughout the east and west.

Every person has a story. It simply depends on how you want to tell it.

Sioux Falls

Published by Outer Woods                        

Copyright Year: 2015

Copyright © 2015, David Cumming

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means – whether auditory, graphic, mechanical or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author.

Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law. The moral and intellectual rights of the author have been asserted.

As this is a piece of creative writing, all the characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any similarity between this story and real events or persons living or dead, is coincidental.

Table of Contents

Left Part

Middle Part

Right Part

To our father, David Christopher

Left Part

Union Square

Manhattan, NY

Monday, August 8, 2005

08h46

A snarling gray cloud curled in and out of itself for only an instant.

Unlike the other graying clouds, which disappeared instantly in the New York summer sweat, this particular cloud tumbled and thrived around the square.

While some onlookers were perplexed by the cloud’s stay, the majority of witnesses gawked at an airplane that slowly sliced through this cloud. Thinking this might somehow disturb the cloud, both plane and cloud didn’t falter, and they both continued daintily on their respective courses of flight.

But a sweltering heat still smothered the square. It bubbled from the oiled concrete and the humidity lingered for hours. People still gathered and wandered around in circles around below the cloud in a strange shuffling dance and prayed for rain.

The cloud mimicked the walking patterns the people were making below, and from it’s dark gray hue, the cloud began to shape shift and meld into assorted gestures, flashing brief colors of all kinds, perhaps according people’s clothing, as though it wanted to be one of them on the ground.

In this way, it seemed gracious for the greeting it received from the crowd that gathered below it. And for just a moment, it gave the people a fantastic sense of faith that the days would start to cool off.

The cloud passed in and around the square’s lofty buildings. And people followed in its wake, holding out their hands for alms from the cloud. Teased by the cloud, they clung onto the air like strings attached to a parade balloon. And as the cloud rose and sunk, it never touched the ground, and it played inside and around the shorter buildings, pausing with a childlike blush again and again.

When the people below got bored of the cloud running around the square, the cloud felt lonely, and began to turn into various shapes of animals. The people pointed each animal out as they saw them, and just when they thought they’d given it a definite shape, the cloud immediately metamorphosed: a tiger turned into a bird, an elephant into a cow, and no two animals were seen again.

The cloud skipped about and made a second coming around the streets of the square.

Mystified, the people below mutely cried out, wondering about its origin and beauty. They formed a block-wide circle and made an encampment below the cloud. And when the cloud moved, the people moved, spinning in this subservient ballet.

They stood prophesying under this canopy of silence, waiting for it to hit the ground so they could chase it again. But it never let up rain and the cloud still remained suspended.

And in a halt of time, the onlookers below saw it become a beautiful, massive materialization of the sun, perfect in pallet and composition, maybe even more beautiful than the sun.

The cloud winced and throbbed and tried to hold its form. But it couldn’t.

Then suddenly, without forecast, a tuffaceous flow of ash poured down from the hazy yellow globule of a cloud.

It began to expand, the light so bright that the people had to cover their faces with their hands.

And when the cloud reached it’s final stage of expansion, it released itself from suspension above the center of the square in a freeing, Vesuvian blast of ash.

St. Mark’s Place,

New York City, NY

Monday, August 8, 2005

09h03

Yancy Ackerman, as he loomed over the sharp frame of an unstable fire escape above the hushed streets at dawn, sucked in pale gray ash that drifted in between the crevices of buildings.

His nostrils flared as he lit a stick full of gluey tobacco. He snorted a bit on the uptake, and then he wishboned it in his fingers off the wayside of the ledge.

I don’t know how you do it, Yancy’s words broke out all muffled, and he passed down the cigarette to Irina Kadmon, his roommate of four years since freshman year at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. She rubbed her eyes uncomfortably, stared down at her legs for a moment, and then pounded the bottom of Yancy’s cigarette packet anxiously.

Her eyes were fixed on the dim sun that was being overtaken by a dark gray cloud.

Yancy nudged Irina’s bony right shoulder, which was oddly less muscular than her left. She took the cigarette and scratched her eyes with the opposite knuckles.

Blurry gray dots overtook Yancy’s face. You’ve been staring at the sun for about an hour now. The dots slowly fizzled out of sight.

It’s like, I dunno … my super power, Irina said. I see the days in darkness, actually. And I can’t see in any color.

I’ve heard of that before, Yancy inserted. Prosopagnosia.

No, close — protanopia, actually — since I was little. When I close my eyes at night, I see intense light, but no color.

Isn’t that what Catwoman had? Yancy asked, and Irina slicked back her long black hair on cue, into a ponytail, which flared out and scratched at the dusty air. Fingers waved at Yancy. She ripped the cigarette, blowing kisses in between puffs with the orange fire stuck between her natural chapped pink lips, and expelling darker than usual smoke. Yancy blushed and got lost in his mind for a bit, but pulled it back together. "Like, night vision and shit?"

Are you just trying to get me to walk around the apartment in tight leather pants? She held the little cigarette all Old Hollywood — her blue eyes waltzed in the tiny dancehalls of her irises, glistening in the sun over to Yancy, who beamed. Her tiny elbow rested on her right kneecap, head tucked back, and the smoke still seeped out of her lips all oozy and it warmed the air between them. Because I’ll do it, if you’d pay my rent.

Yancy’s fingers were suddenly his drumsticks, then wrapped around the railing, in loose spaghetti strands. Seeing as though I already pay your rent by myself, the leather couldn’t hurt.

Irina took three quick sips at the cigarette before Yancy held his head on the railing and said, I don’t even smoke cigarettes. He turned downward to retrieve what was left of their mutual flamed friend. Neither do I, Irina said with smoke spewing out of her nostrils. She coughed and held the cigarette back up and in her left hand black soot trailed in her palm but she wiped it on the slits in the fire escape below her and continued.

Makes us look hip though, right?

Yancy winced. He flicked the half-lit cigarette off the roof as a paper football. It sparked on the way down but the orangish cloud below them in the alley cycled through and stifled the cigarette. Strange, said Yancy.

Irina tried to stand up, but went right back down and pinched her scalp. Whatcha doing after work tonight, Mr. Yancy? Tearing up the town?

"Not tonight. I’ve got exams to grade. Merit-based pay. See, if the kids don’t do well, the school gets shit money."

So what are you saying, you’re going to make the tests easier so your kids do better?

Are you insane? He spit black off the side and followed it all the way down; a tiny thwap on a garbage can lid resonated upward. That would get me fired.

Yancy felt a warm draft slowly creep up on him from the alley below. The sides of the buildings then gave a slight tremor. That was strange. Did you feel that?

Feel what?

That tremor. He held his ear to the warm rusted railing; Irina was still pounding her cigarette packet. Will you stop, I’m trying to listen. Then a loud bang shook the fire escape. They held on the railings for a second, and then Yancy released. When was the last time there was an earthquake in New York City?

Before our time, at least. Irina stopped holding on, and a brown haze casted over their heads, but then contracted and funneled northeast to Union Square. Nothing new under the sun, right? Probably an echo from some construction site, do they ever stop construction in this city? She resumed with her beating of the cigarette packet.

Yancy thought about all the work he still had to do that night. The current lesson plan was teaching his kids about carbon in the atmosphere.

He stared at the dissipating macaroon cloud that burned in the sky. Irina handed him a cigarette, and threw the lighter at his face. "Ah, shit. He dodged it thinking it was something else. Sorry about that."

It’s fine, a lighter’s a lighter. She was red-eyed and oddly peppy. He climbed down to her level. She touched the burnt end of her velvet cigarette, shadowed strangely by the passing gray cloud again. Irina’s cigarette aflame, she sipped from it and pointed to her mouth, and Yancy said, I’m good.

You sure? she asked, and took a deep drag.

Yancy asked her, We’re all supposed to fulfill some sort of individual purpose, right?

I dig what you’re asking, Irina said as the cigarette steam blew out all ebb and flow. But sometimes I think you look into things too much.

You’re right, I got to go anyway. He stared at the gray and light orange-toned cloud, which was dreadfully near, a headdress over Union Square. Hey! You see that?

"Yeah, yeah. What do you think it was?"

Looks like it wants to rain. Let’s go inside. Yancy stood up, and stretched out his hand to assist Irina, who was finishing tying her left shoe. Need a hand?

I got it, thanks. She struggled with the nylon strings with the cigarette hanging from her lips.

There was once a very sad rabbit and his ears so long and narrow. And it hurt because he would step on them. Yancy bent down and took the laces from her hands. One day a fairy landed on the bunny's head.

I’ll tell you who’s a fairy, she said frustrated, wiping her sweaty forehead.

Yancy tightened them in response. See, the fairy lifted the bunny's ears, and crisscrossed them like an X. Then the fairy pulled one ear through the bottom of the X, and tugged.

I got it from here, Yance.

He resisted her intruding hands. This fairy made each long ear into a loop and made a similar X. Then she put one ear under the X, tugging one last time. From then on the rabbit remembered how to tie his ears into a bow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Irina chided. You’re such an asshole, Yance.

And the rabbit lived happily every after. Yancy stood up and stumbled a bit. I’m just joshing, Irina, you know that.

I’m almost late for work.

You’d better get a move on, Mr. Fairy — the L-train might be running slow.

He left her outside and rushed into the bathroom.He leaned forward, elbows in the sink, picking dead skin off his pasty nose, and he poked the black rings under his eyes — they turned white and then faded back to purple and gray.

Yancy rinsed with mouthwash and spit a hefty ball of black mucous in the sink.

I’m leaving, Irina. He scooped his bag and tweed jacket from the couch, where Irina sat dead-eyed toward the television set. I’ll see you.

Wepwawet Psychiatric Center

New York City, NY

Monday, August 8, 2005

07h50 


A handful of fleeting gibberish blasted through the bars of patient cellblocks from the hallow hallway.

Fly, fly away in the morning.

You know a way out, out, out of here?

I’ll be seeing you later … in my dreams.

Dawn Kilroy, repulsed by the last comment, blew past them without facing her patients.

The psychiatric center was sequestered soundly on Randall’s Island, and its isolation from the rest of New York City sometimes made Dawn shutter when she was alone with patients that weren’t hers. 

She whizzed past security guards, who nodded politely, but snickered to each other as her back faced them. The hallway was bright before it exited to the parking garage. The floor seemed to blend in with a stack of documents Dawn clasped tightly, reading while walking. And with the city’s morning traffic, she was going to be late again to visit her father, Robert.

Dawn sped back to her apartment, which wasn’t far from Wepwawet, because she needed to be there most of the week. She worked more than fifty hours a week to afford the hospital bills that her father racked up at the Laramie House, a hospital and research facility mostly for patients with symptoms of wandering and sundowning with Alzheimer’s.

She sped out of the garage and exited off the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, back to her Astoria home. 

Once home, she speed-walked down the hallway, the sound of busy traffic below her and the stench of lifeless geranium wafted through Dawn's open kitchen window. It reeked of salty corrosion when she walked toward the only window in her apartment, which was at an apex of the building’s third floor, between a tall poster of Thelonious Monk and another of a sloppy finger-painting of earth, done by one of her more docile Wepwawet patients. In New York City, these kinds of smells were common, but the odor irritated her lungs. She gawked for an instant at the Socrates Sculpture Garden across the street, and then slammed the frame down, latched it, and hastily wrapped a plastic gift card in a piece of a day-old comic section of the Sunday newspaper. She took a heavy sip of coffee. A tiny bit trickled down her chin, spiraled downward, and finally flattened on top of the curved overhang of her breasts.

After pulling an all-nighter at Wepwawet, she chalked it up to being punchy.

Her father’s birthday was this particular Tuesday. These things were important to her, but they always seemed to be less and less important to her father with the ongoing years.

Dawn knew fragments about her childhood. She could have been an alien, placed on earth at some point, raised like Superman. All Robert had told her was that her mother had disappeared when she was little, and he would usually change the subject right after.

Her incomplete record pervaded her mind for a few, and then she moved on.

Dawn worked in the middle of the Hudson River. And upstate Manhattan was somewhat near the Laramie House near Coney Island that she admitted Robert to. This was more so to be closer to him to mimic the home feel from Sioux Falls where he lived alone after Dawn graduated from schools nearby. But as some paranoia symptoms began to seep in, repeatedly for about a year, she had to do something about it.

Dawn would get calls from the local police, who said that they’d receive calls from Robert late at three or four in the morning. Robert would tell them he had intruders on his property, that men were staring at him through his window, or in the bushes outside his house, that they wielded mortar rockets and snipers, and could pick him off at any minute from their position. The police would come and calm him down most of the time, but in the last call they’d received, Robert complained about bombings in his head, that the explosions were cracking open his head with tiny grenades. Of course the police came, and as soon as the red and blue disco lights roared into his driveway, Robert opened fire on the police car, blowing out their tires and windshields. The patrolmen darted into his hedges as their cars met their demise as wasted shrapnel. And Robert, like a modern-day Don Quixote, continued firing his gun, sure of a legitimate attack.

The police rounded the house, busted inside and caught him from behind. No one was injured, but it terrified the neighbors knowing that an 83-year-old man was still holstering his weapons from the Second World War.

Dawn called the Laramie House. Robert was immediately admitted. They surrounded me, he told her on the phone within the first few minutes of being at the hospital. Bastards. They left me and my men sequestered, and they took us from behind.

World War doesn’t mean that you’re always at war with the world, Robert, she said to him after the last incident. You were shooting at the police officers. Not some fascist regime.

They diagnosed him with a heart condition — fluid had been building around his heart at random. It didn’t help that it ran alongside with beginning symptoms of sundowning, where he couldn’t remember anything after the sunlight leaked from his room. But Dawn visited him when she could. And with more acute symptoms of sundowning, she was afraid that soon she wouldn’t be able to learn any more about her missing mother.

She tried to pry it from him, but he would always forget her name, or what she even looked like.

He could tell her about living in Sioux Falls, where Robert raised cattle with his father as a boy. She spent her early teens going to school like any other child, but there’d always be comments about why she looked so different from Robert, without a mother to compare genetics. She often wondered why he insisted that she call him by his first name as well. Perhaps because of his military background, she used to think.

Robert was at the ripe age of 18 when they casted him in the Army. Sometimes she would be bitter about the world that stole Robert’s youth, and thought perhaps the war was what was causing the sundowning. He’d tell her that people are born into a chess game. God plays both opponents, and that there was no choice but to play until the game was finished.

With the gift card on the front seat of her red Chevrolet station wagon, a radio talk show was in and out of static as she drove into the heart of the city and wondered how differently her life may have been with a mother. 

The static and the voices faded in and out of the speakers and somehow the voices were always comforting.

Younger Middle School

Brooklyn, NY

Monday, August 8, 2005

09h37

For the fourth week in a row, Yancy would have to masquerade his tardiness to his first period physical geography class.

Yancy scurried inside his school, past the strange odor of administration offices, past the ornately plaqued teacher’s awards. He paused for a second at the heads in frames. They smiled at him with their names embroidered in the gray stone.

He continued down the hall, and elbowed the door to his classroom. I’m so sorry guys, it’s the damn L-train again, Yancy blurted, realizing it wasn’t his classroom, but Abdul Rasheed’s physics class.

And good morning to you, Mr. Yancy, Mr. Rasheed said half laughing.

Red-faced, Yancy leaked out and tackled the adjacent door, and whispered, Sorry guys.

Sixty-four seventh-grade eyes beamed him down, as he clumsily hit his knee on his black granite desk. Ah, shit! Excuse me.

He heaved his brown leather messenger bag over the sink adjacent to the desk. You know, when Mussolini was in charge, he made the trains run on time, he held in a number of other fleeting expletives due to his throbbing knee. The least thing they can do in New York is run the trains accordingly. He cringed a smile. "So I’m not late for my favorite morning class."

Yancy’s abrupt entrance permitted a prattling rouse among his class.

You told us that excuse yesterday.

That’s not really true.

Always blaming it on fascist efficiency.

Yancy leaned forward on his desk, intrigued; he sprawled his hands out like a stretching cat. Now there are the hopeful, discerning students I know. You’re more awake than yesterday, he yawned. Shall we get started?

He unzipped his bag, the thin sound echoing off the hollow white walls. He itched his chin—grinding, unkempt stubble. He could feel his cheekbones, and realized that he wasn’t eating too well. He peered in his bag to confirm this notion: a peanut butter sandwich and a Capri Sun.

Yancy looked up at the dazed faces, part of a routine blank staring game where they wondered about his future for a few seconds every morning.

And everything slowed.

He could hear his eyelids thwap as he blinked. Then a chorus of random eyelid snaps, offbeat, kept a sort of odd rhythm, like little jazz drummers. He felt the air in between his body and an over-sized green plaid button-down shirt. His belt was hitched at the tightest notch, which held up a pair of brown pleated pants. And his shoes could use a shine as well.

A thin stream of sweat trickled down his right temple. It was August and summer’s end was close. He could still taste the stale subway air on the back of his throat.

And in all of the five seconds that this took him, he finished by looking at the posters on the back wall of the classroom for ideas about today’s lesson plan: volcanoes, the lost city of Atlantis, earthquakes. But almost a five years after September 11, Yancy still shuddered at the idea of teaching the natural disaster curriculum to his students. He remembered the displaced faces that day, some parents running into the auditorium after the attack. The embracing. The scampering out to leave school early. Yancy was in charge of keeping the ones whose parents didn’t pick them up that day occupied. And the heavy realization that their parents worked in or around the World Trade Center during the attack.

The room finally zeroed in and funneled back into his eye sockets. He slurped up the sterile classroom smell with his nostrils. A thick smell of ammonia revived him like a paramedic.

His muscles shivered. Yancy ducked and covered behind his desk, grabbed the wastebasket and ran out the door.

From the bowls of the basket outside he could hear his students groan. Yancy gave a muffled groan to match theirs. He composed himself and left the wastebasket outside the room and opened the door again. Just a head cold everyone — nothing contagious. He shuttered at the idea of the body just expunging anything that didn’t belong in the body. Just give me a minute.

He continued to vomit black soot into the basket. Then he pried a broken school locker and shoved the basket inside and heaved his waist into the rusted door to seal it shut.

Yancy casually walked back in the room. The children continued blinking, but the blinking was more focused. The sound ruptured in his ears. He sat back down and ran his hands through his greasy hair and felt a dull pound on his left shoulder.

Someone threw a piece of gum at him from the back of the room. Yancy smirked. Good aim.

Minutes went by and he focused on the empty hum in his head. He turned around to the blank chalkboard for ideas and the class was already bored of Yancy’s morning quarrels. They proceeded with a collective nasally, early morning sigh. Um … okay guys, so you won’t need you’re books today, he said confidently. We’re all going on a field trip.

Some of the children looked alarmed. A chorus of complaints and hesitations ensued.

Will we need our lunch money?

What about morning announcements?

It's way too early.

Yancy breathed out heavily and straightened his black horn rim glasses, pressing the bridge firmly out of frustration. They weren’t prescription. He knew this. Like Irina’s cigarettes substituted for hipness, Yancy wore them to look more astute to his colleagues.

Listen … guys, he said. Why not mix it up a bit? I’m sure announcements are only a few words about the softball team’s incredible loss last week. He waited to hear any laughter, but no dice. Anyway, I think it’d be good to get some fresh air today.

It’s too hot, Mr. Yancy.

I have allergies.

Do we need to sign a waiver?

His head was splitting again. Yancy couldn’t tell where the little voices were coming from. He felt the urge to vomit, but he kept it in. He burped and just let the sour stomach acid eat away at his esophagus for a minute.

Okay, okay. I can tell that we’re incredibly impressed by my lesson plan today. Listen, I’ll do you one better. He adjusted his glasses again. Over here, come on.

Yancy glided down the narrow row of desks to the corner window. It smelled of damp carpet. Perhaps old urine from an impatient child of yesteryear. Now, can anyone tell me what you see outside this window?

No response. Zero arousal. Only clacking, hazy eyes.

Someone? Anyone? he asked. Well, that’s an Oak tree. Yancy let this trifling observation sink in. And what is that webbing its branches?

Still, nothing.

I’ll give you a hint. It’s a Spanish ... something Yancy pried at them. Gentle snickering from the class.

A Spanish empanada.

An ugly Spaniard.

Montezuma’s revenge.

Yancy remembered the ease of jokes as a child, how anything was funny to them at that age. Still in his twenties, Yancy wondered why he didn’t just laugh along with them.

Seriously, guys. What is it?

Silence.

It’s Spanish moss, he said deflated. See, no matter how seemingly ugly something is on the outside, and no matter what trivial a task it has in this world, it holds just as much of a gift that’s unique, that’s intricate, that’s confusing, and that’s as beautiful as anything.

Oh, Mr. Yancy loves the Spanish boss.

Mr. Yancy wants to date his Spanish boss.

Yancy boy is a tree hugger.

He turned red. And I don’t love it. I just like the idea of it a lot. Yancy guffawed. And who called me a tree hugger? I sort of take offense to that.

Why like an idea?

Someone asked earnestly from the chorus of snickers.

The students parted ways slightly, revealing only one in the back of the crowd. Standing serious and still there was Jimmu Kenshō. His dusty, blue eyes snarled, but just for a second.

Yancy with his arms crossed, spotted a penny-sized discoloration on his shirt, possibly leftover vomit from earlier. So he climbed his arms down, diaphragm-level, snug, moving up and down to try and dry it off.

Jimmu raised his eyebrows at Yancy’s strange, all of a sudden itch in the vomit spot. His pettish voice chirped. You know, like, how can you just like the idea of something, instead of the thing itself? And the profound statement, to Yancy, at least, channeled through the heavy wisps of futile chatter between the quizzical middle school schooler.

Well, Jimmu, Yancy uncrossed his right arm, pointing at Jimmu like Uncle Sam wanted him, his remaining fingers itching at the spot in his shirt, which oozed blue. It’s quite interesting if you give it a chance. Yancy saw that Jimmu’s eyes were more interested in his itching. Sorry, I guess I need one of those pocket protector things. And he turned around to the window and pulled a pen out of his left pant pocket and slid it in his breast pocket over the stain. "Anyway, one of the simplest examples of mutualism, my little scholars. Can anyone tell me what the word mutual means?"

They answered honestly.

Sharing.

An understanding.

Reaching out.

Exactly … right, Yancy said, looking down, checking his shirt for more black stains, but that was the only one. "So … we’re on the third floor of our school building. The moss is at our eye-level, and nowhere else. Why is that?"

Because it likes to climb trees.

Because it wants to be closer to us.

Because it likes the light.

The itch