Kindred Spirits

By William Elder

KINDRED SPIRITS is the story of Arnold St. Clair, an aspiring writer in
1970s California with a lovely but quirky girlfriend. (Why wont she take off
her shoes?) Its also the story of Alex Duval, a traveler in India with his own
beckoning mysteries, chief of which is a new girlfriend who insists she and
Alex were lovers in a previous life. Arnies and Alexs odysseys shuffl e them
around the world and launch them back in time as they struggle toward an
elusive place: knowing who they are and why things happen as they do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456870645

William Elder

William Elder is a former newspaper writer and editor who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is his second novel.

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Copyright © 2011 by William Elder.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011902533

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-7063-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-7062-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-7064-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

PART I

BOOK ONE: The Islands

BOOK TWO: The Journal of Arnold St. Clair

BOOK THREE: The Transcendental Bushwhacker

BOOK FOUR: The Journal of Arnold St. Clair

BOOK FIVE: Head Fog

BOOK SIX: The Journal of Arnold St. Clair

BOOK SEVEN: Dr. Past Life

BOOK EIGHT: The Journal of Arnold St. Clair

PART II

BOOK NINE: Trials on Tribulation

BOOK TEN: Hawk on a Thermal

BOOK ELEVEN: Vacuum Remedy for the Blues

BOOK TWELVE: The Rules of Reincarnation

PART III

BOOK THIRTEEN: The Dead Dog’s Aye

BOOK FOURTEEN: A Knapsack with the Devil

BOOK FIFTEEN: No More Tragedy in the Warm Pool of Death

PART IV

BOOK SIXTEEN: Eurydice

BOOK SEVENTEEN: The Factotum of His Desire

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

—Martin Buber

PART I

BOOK ONE

The Islands

Tell me something, said Faith Gallagher, as her lunch companion arranged a french fry on his barracuda’s intimidating head. What do you think about reincarnation?

Alex Duval stopped chewing. Um. Well. Hmmm.

Now, Alex, it’s all right. Whatever you believe—chakras, crop circles, cockroaches as God—whatever you believe in is perfectly fine. Because nobody knows what’s really the truth. It’s all just guesswork. It’s all supposition. And one person’s guess is as good as another’s.

Alex swallowed his fish and nodded. He’d never eaten a fish with the head still attached. He was glad he had hidden the eye, that glassy half-marble so frozen and damning, so reflective of the terror of being yanked from the sea. But even covered, he found, the fish eye haunted him, sticking like a bone in his memory.

You take my mother, for example, continued Faith. She happens to believe there are aliens among us. There is a map to their mother ship, she firmly believes, in the complexion of Ewan McGregor’s face. Now, do I look down on her for believing this? No. Am I condescending in my approach when we discuss it? Of course not. She’s got a solid right to believe in this, and for all we know she’s right. I’d never want to mess with that.

Alex, bundled in thought, took another bite of barracuda, still struggling with the formulation of an answer.

Faith touched his hand, and he blushed at the contact, wondering what Manoj might be thinking. Bringing Faith was an afterthought to the picnic on the island; the original plan had been a trip for one. Now he was making out with some girl he’d just met. Those Americans, always lucky and flouting convention to have their way.

But even, she said, still stroking his hand, "if we do come back, it’s permissible to spoil ourselves shamelessly in this life, don’t you think?"

He smiled at her. That question was not difficult to answer.

*

He’d met her that morning as he sat on the beach, reading Forster and awaiting the excursion. Spotting her as she came wading past a mangrove point, he got her attention by waving his book.

She responded by hoisting the bananas she was toting, dangling the cluster like a sash above her head.

Alex seized his pen from his pack and wrote on the only available sheet of paper, the title page of the novel: The heat in the tropics is narcotic; it erodes your reserve. Which rarely is an undesirable thing.

He got to his feet as the woman waded ashore.

She was leggy and blond, wrapped in a blue sari, her elbow-length hair parted straight in the middle. She smiled at him and said she was Faith from Cincinnati.

Alex, from Los Angeles. He smiled back at her as she offered him a banana.

What are you doing? she asked.

Just waiting to take a trip. He felt the tropical heat encouraging him again. Would you like to go fishing with me?

Her green eyes flashed, and he pointed out his ride: a long wooden motorboat nodding in the cove, fifty yards out from the shore. The boat was the color of the ocean, and looked long enough to seat several people.

Actually, he said, I’m not really going fishing—I’ll only be tagging along. A couple of fishermen’ll do all the work. It was arranged by my hotel. There’ll be a picnic too, on the beach of John Lawrence Island. That’s that string of dark green you can see over there.

He pointed across the water, to a place a mile away: a line of trees, and below it a beach, bright like a strip of metal in the sun.

It’s gorgeous, said Faith.

Can you be back here in half an hour?

She nodded. I’m staying like right over there. She pointed down the beach, a short distance north, to a row of simple A-frames by the sand.

I’ll go change, she said. I’ll see you in a bit.

Half an hour later she emerged from her shack, dressed in blue cutoffs and an oversized T-shirt. Alex was standing where he’d left her, waiting now with the crew: the guide, Manoj, supplied by Alex’s resort; and Sanjay and Mamoti, the pair of fishermen who owned the boat.

All ready? asked Manoj. Alex stuck up a thumb. They sat single-file and shoved off.

Facing Faith’s backside, and with the aging motor jackhammering his ears, Alex decided against an attempt at conversation. He looked around them as they sliced through the sea. This was it, he thought, the mother of all mysteries: an entire world separate from our own, dark and then darker and then totally black, far below the surface of the oceans.

Mamoti cut the engine and they drifted.

Oh, look, said Faith.

Alex turned around. Sanjay and Mamoti were baiting hooks with kori, a silvery, sardinelike fish. They flung their lines into the water, unraveling them from crude rods, which were only an I-shaped piece of wood about the size of the men’s hands.

But nothing bit, and the party motored on.

A little later, with a swish, the underside of the boat nudged the clean sand of John Lawrence Island.

John Lawrence, said Faith, as she and Alex hopped ashore, is named for a long-dead English military officer. As is Havelock Island, where, of course, we’re staying.

Havelock was a general who rescued some of his countrymen during a mutiny of the Indian army. So I think it goes like this: first you’re courageous, then you die, and then an inconspicuous speck of the British Empire is named for you.

She smiled at him. We like to do our homework before we travel.

You’ve got to, Faith. You can’t travel without developing some kind of an understanding. It’d be like going to a movie without eyes.

"I’d never shut my eyes in the middle of this. Edge of the planet. The awesome Andamans."

This your first trip?

Yep.

Me too.

Beer and barracuda in thirty minutes, said Manoj, before heading into the trees to dig a firepit.

Alex and Faith wandered up the beach. When the strand reached its terminus at a high wall of rock, they stripped to their swimsuits and splashed into the sea. Alex noted Faith’s bikini was the color of her sari, which was the color of their boat, the sea, and the sky. A confluence of the blues, but he felt happy.

What do you do in Cincinnati? he asked.

I teach yoga to birds.

In LA, maybe.

"And in Cincinnati. You’ve seen the sharp neck turns they do."

Yeah.

Well, they need to be skilled at this or the darlings’ll hurt themselves. Someone has to teach them the right moves. And that’s me.

You’re joking.

Of course I’m joking. But somehow they must learn not to break their little necks. Haven’t you ever wondered about that? Cats’ve got it too. It’s an incredible adroitness. Far beyond what we humans can do.

I have a cat, he said, but he’s not inclined to move. Too old to be slick, I guess. But seriously, Faith, what do you do?

"Seriously, Alex, I’m the owner of a florist shop. Which is such a tired old answer. And you?"

"I write for the LA Times. Travel articles and stuff. I’ll be turning something in on this trip. Lucy, my boss, says if it’s on the map it’s got a story. Maybe not five thousand words, but still a story. I earn a living having to prove that she’s right."

That’s interesting, she said, and left it at that. She hopped and leveled out to be carried in by a wave.

Sure beats being a shopkeeper, he muttered, then followed her.

Not stopping to towel off where they had left their belongings, Faith approached the wall of rock and began to climb it. The ascent was easy; wind and wave had sculpted the rock into a series of giant steps.

Alex paused at the bottom, watching her move. She was all arms and legs, bronzed and strong, probably the type to have clawed up Yosemite. Probably a kayaker too. Likes to run in the morning. Needs to test herself, not happy unless she’s challenged and remote. Edgy, but without being a nongirlie dirtbag.

Perfect, he thought, as she scaled the top and disappeared from sight.

At the top he found her with her belly exposed to the equatorial sun, an arm flung across her eyes for protection. He took his glasses off and stretched out next to her. It’s awesome, he said. The world’s so much bigger when you’re in the middle of the ocean.

That’s because there’s nothing that can clutter up the horizon. What you see is what you’re meant to see.

That’s good, he said, and left it at that, wishing he had smeared himself with sunblock. The cloudless sky rained melanoma, but Manoj would call soon.

Alex?

Yeah?

How tall are you?

Six even. Why do you ask?

Verrrrry auspicious.

He turned to look at her; she was smiling toward the sky. He leaned over and kissed her, a tentative brush of her lips.

"What! That was a kiss?"

Well, yeah.

You’re one shy boy from the wild woolliness of Los Angeles.

Well, it’s the Age of Contagion.

"I don’t have anything." She pulled his head close and kissed him with an open mouth.

Hello! Lunch! Manoj called from below.

Go away! Faith yelled back.

We’re coming! said Alex, grinning as he shook his head at her.

Their table by the water was a large plastic cooler, which Manoj had draped with a crimson tablecloth. They sat in plastic deck chairs beneath a rainbow-colored parasol, as the barefoot Manoj crossed the sand with their food: a barracuda for each of them—caught the day before—and fried potatoes and rice and cold beer.

After bringing his clients their lunch, Manoj retreated to his makeshift kitchen. Sanjay and Mamoti were out by the boat, inspecting it in a few feet of water. It felt appropriate to not hurry through the food.

You’re cogitating, said Faith. He still hadn’t answered her question, the one about a life before the current one. I can sense it. There’s a distinct crinkly aspect to your brow.

Um. Yeah.

That’s OK, Alex. I know you’ll get back to me. And don’t, she said, lifting the french fry from his barracuda’s head, let a temporary little thing like death get through to you.

Alex shook his head. No. Not at all. Never.

*

I have a confession, he said, undressing after dinner, in the weak light of the lone candle in her shack.

Confess away, Sir Augustine. Her wrinkled blue sundress made a soft hwuck as it landed on the floor.

I have no sense of smell.

And I need to know this because…

I showered before dinner, but, being ten degrees off the equator, I probably have gotten rank again. So, if you’re bummed out, I’m sorry.

Hey. Not a problem. I’m a little rank too. Which obviously won’t turn you off.

He felt the need to explain. You see, I had a childhood tonsillectomy, and then a pair of adenoidectomies. They robbed me of my sense of smell. But I definitely can taste. There’s no problem with that. Oh, yeah. I’m good at taste.

Faith unrolled her sleeping bag on the shack’s thin mat. She lay down, and Alex lay next to her. She closed her eyes, and he kissed her there, before kissing her on the lips. This time she got more than a peck.

God, how I love it when a man sweats, she said. He can reek and it’s… mmmm. So fine.

Sure.

The thing about sweat, she explained, as Alex kissed her on the neck, is it shows you’ll get dirty for what you love. And passion, Alex, means everything to me. That’s something I think you should know.

He nibbled on the knob of a bony red shoulder, eliciting a tiny sweet gasp. "Raise your arms. Up. Cross ’em above your head. Something you should know about me: I have an underarm fetish." He licked her left armpit, savoring rough texture, the clean sharp brininess of her sweat. She delighted him with the absence of deodorant.

Again Faith gasped.

A man, she said, who hasn’t come in a while, he sheds the most wonderful scent. It’s like a cross between the sea, some really good compost, and a flowering pot of melampodium. It makes me want to have sex with him—very very much.

Salty, earthy, and sweet. That would be me.

Oh yes, she whispered, as he licked her other armpit. Oh, Alex. You can beat me, you can rape me, you can rob me blind—I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!

Jesus, thought Alex. That came out of the box called mental. He pulled his pants close and dug out a condom. He took a pass on indulging her fetishes.

Later, side-by-side with him in post-sex torpor, she made another statement that unnerved him. Alex, I am certain I have known you before.

He told her he didn’t know anyone from Cincinnati, and had never set foot in the town.

"Not in this life, she said, frowning. I was talking about a previous one."

Ah.

That’s why I was drawn to you on the beach, and said yes when you asked me to come fishing. That and your face, your movie-star face. I can’t be with someone, Alex, if their face doesn’t connect. In a relationship, everything must begin above the neck.

Uneasy with the return of the past-life topic, he sought to steer the talk to where his footing was assured. Everything begins with courage, I think, at least as far as travel is concerned. Post-September the eleventh.

"We are the only white people on this island, aren’t we? But I had a feeling Mother India was safe."

She is, and she’s not the only place like that. The one redeeming feature of living in a police state is the absolute pervasiveness of safety. You won’t be blown to bits in China.

So you’ve been there.

He nodded. And I didn’t even think—not for a millionth of a second—about the possibility of a terrorist abduction. There just wasn’t that possibility. I was as relaxed as I am back home.

What’re some of the other places you’ve been? As a travel writer, you must get around.

Oh, Alaska, Tasmania. Bulgaria. Tibet.

So you like places quiet or remote.

He seeks that rare precinct, that wilder meridian, far from the bland here-and-now.

Who said that?

Me.

I like it, Alex. I too seek the out-of-the-way spots.

And you hope to gain what, finding yourself there?

It’s a sense, I think, that I’m outside myself, blending who I am into what might’ve been.

Do you want to blend into the other side of the island in the morning?

No. 7 beach? She said yes, then fell asleep.

*

Everything on the island went by a number. The jetty where the ferry came and went was No. 1; the beach where Alex and Faith were staying was No. 5; the nearest stores were at a crossroads known as No. 3. Such numerical nomenclature struck Alex as shabby, given the island’s extreme beauty and exoticness. Why not call a beach Nirvana Beach, a village the Cathedral of Palms? Surely this would bolster the sleepy Andamans’ tourism. But maybe, he decided, subjection by the British had zapped all desire for poeticizing. It was all India could do to forge an identity, to build an economy, to stare down a dicey Pakistan. They could assign the pretty place-names later.

On the other hand, perhaps Havelock’s beauty simply spoke for itself. As he and Faith rode motorbikes on the crumble-cake pavement of the only road to run east to west, Alex glanced from side to side and sucked it all in, the untrammeled riot of tropical verdure, all the rice fields and palm trees and banana plants and giant elephant’s-ears, and he thought if he could smell it, this explosion of botany, this skyward striving of every green living thing, that what stormed his nostrils wouldn’t be a single scent, or even a collection of scents, but the very molecules of life itself.

He also saw occasional homes on either side of the road, simple homes of stick and thatch, sometimes with a water buffalo snoozing in a front pond. Manoj