by Tuttle, Dan;
what his life’s like, with toadies close in tow?
With everyone agreeing to what he’s
proposed, some consciously and others not,
those not because they think that courtesy’s
due to the nouveau riche?” “It’s Camelot,
with knights and honor, deference, all that,”
said Cade, to add to Stella’s side, “ingrained.”
Benita took it in, defenses flat,
with curiosity they both maintained
positions counter to her read of things.
Stel noted theme for sonnet. “No one flings
243.
himself at us the way they do at Joe,”
said Stella. “Think you’d have the upper hands,
by being ladies, and attractive. Nope!
They go to where the Cash Rules and commands
the ‘Everything Around theM’,” Cade observed.
As Benny mulled it through, they let a pause
erupt into the kitchen. Undeserved
homage to someone solely, well, because
they made bajillion bucks seemed at once real
and quite ridiculous. Stel wondered if
she’d also been so supplicant, genteel.
It hurt a bit to think what made the diff
in getting her to US was the same:
proximity to man with true power’s claim.
244.
“Hey slowpokes!” shouted voice from outside tub,
“I’m sweating water still, how’m I supposed
to drink my way to meeting Beelzebub
if I’m without an adult tea to toast?”
“Oh, always classy, that one,” Benny said.
All smirked at smugness suffocating them,
and Stel walked out with beverage. “Shush, dickhead,
you’re being served, be grateful!” Tee condemned
her doting suitor, also clad to swim
and sitting on tub edge, wet, steamy-blurred.
A locomotive’s worth of vapor limned
her figure, nigh angelic. “Be our third!”
invited Joe, “and, mm-mm tasty, thanks!
There’s room in here for all, amass the ranks.”
245.
In reading situation, Stella hoped
again naïveté helped Joe choose words.
Insinuating ‘third’ suggested grope
was covert wish of this friend-cum-drunkard.
Though tiniest bit tempered by the ask
that she invite the masses, it repulsed.
Tee’s patience with insouciance unmasked,
she said, “Joe dearest, words like that dredge gulfs
between you and the ‘ranks’.” “I’m welcoming!
What’s criminal in that?” “You asked for sex.”
“Of course I didn’t.” “Terms that seldom ring
to you as problematic or complex
resound more creepily to women. How’d
you’d feel if Grindr rando said aloud
246.
he’d rather like to take you in the butt?”
“That’s different.” “Oh?” “Cause Stella knows we’re friends.
Cause I’m a pipsqueak. ’Cause no doors are shut.
Cause we’re two and arithmetic, well, tends
to find that three’s the integer beyond!
Now let’s put that behind us, toast to joys,
and soak a bit? Such beauty tout le monde
would envy here, from trees to you.” “Ugh. Boys.”
said Tee to Stella, eyes rolled in defeat.
“I think I’d make more headway with a wall.
At least my words would echo back, concrete
proof they’d reached destination,” unappalled
Tee carried on. She slid back in, submerged,
debate less complicated by heat’s splurge.
247.
Stel went in, changed, came out, picked up new thread.
“So, Tee, I got to thinking as we drove
through Napa ’bout the wider watershed.
What happens to those trellised grapevine troves
when rains stop falling, in a drought?” “They’ll pipe
some water from the mountain snowpack. Why?”
“I saw some roadside signs that seemed to gripe
about the irrigation. They’re backed by
the workers there?” “Oh, no. They’re too scared to
have any voice, ’cause some lack documents.
That census question hurt.” “Blue states dared sue
about that, right?” “Yep, said it blocked true sense
of who lives here, repressing turnout. Gone
are days when district maps were fairly drawn.”
248.
“But hypothetically,” Stel posed, “if the
state had to make a trade-off choice to feed
that valley or the city, to stiff a
constituency, what would it do?” “Heed
first-come, first-served laws. Old farms drink most. Can’t
break those entitlements. The state is bound
to honor them—or lawsuit time. Farms plant
their crops from them. Rescind and you’ll have browned
and lifeless fields most everywhere.” “Sure, I
get what you’re saying, stuff of life and all.
But really, let’s say water’s gone, your, my,
and urban, rural lives all stand to fall
when taps run dry. What’s California do?”
“I know that it’s unpolitic taboo
249.
to talk like that if you’re official. Press
on either side can blow that headline up.”
“Then doesn’t it leave you a bit depressed?
It’s something you could act on, ‘dread thine cup
shall runneth dry with climate change!’” “There’s more
and pressing problems Opposition’s picked,”
said Tee defensively. “A guarantor
of water’s not important?” “It restricts
the things we’d work on.” “Sure, but it would serve
this place you live. Plus, if that logic holds
you’d not be just opposing stuff,” observed
Stel, boosting Mo’s past point, “Your crew’s power scolds,
but till it’s channeled locally to build
a noticed change, it’s bluster of strong-willed.”
250.
Big bubbles burbled. Jets blew air. Tub hummed.
The lack of speech made operating sounds
jacuzzi belched the static bassline, numbed
the in-betweens of vocal battlegrounds.
“I like that thought-experiment you pose,”
filled sanguine Teflon Joe, “imagine that
a despot could control how water flows,
and had to balance MUNI and muscat,
the urban markets versus farmsteads. What
would well-intentioned functionary choose?”
“It’s not an agronomic question.” “But
of course it is!” “No, here you overuse
the theoretical, forgetting who
has options past farm gates.” “Oh no, IQ
251.
is normally distributed. Bell curves
mean there’s smart folks in agriculture, Tee.”
“And speaking of, here: try some fresh hors d’oeuvres
from olive farms we got, plus local brie,”
said guest Stel didn’t know who passed ’round plates.
“That doesn’t mean,” Tee snapped right back at Joe,
“that overnight a farmhand recreates
some new career from scratch. Raze Jericho
and get ten thousand refugees.” “So pay
the displaced workers for the time displaced.
Remember, there’s a despot?” “Fine. Defray
some social
cost. But don’t think you’ve erased
all negatives: when you got your degrees
did you get full-time offers? No. Trainees
252.
all have to climb the ladder, network, prove
themselves at base of totem pole for years
before they get the capital to move
up corporate ladders slowly, tiers by tears.”
“Then pay them more. All time can be offset
by some amount of money.” “No, it can’t.
Imagine if you gambled, then lost bet,
had to go to Alaska and replant
yourself. You lose your friends, your kids do too,
and you know zilch about environment.”
“Well clearly, I’d just go build an igloo
and solve it that way: quick retirement!
I’d fish and hunt some caribou.” The flip
was armor coating him head to toe tip.
253.
Details of Ayi’s story further grim,
accentuated how it must have felt
to cede career on governmental whim.
The payment to offset where they had dwelt
came late, and less than promised. Wealth was used
as selling point persuading folks to leave,
then claims for those amounts were all refused
once families relocated. “These days, we’ve
chance of like crisis here. The rumor mill
round Fan says Party’s putting plan in pen
to dam and flood this valley too. None will
confirm it, but one local councilman
whose opposition tendencies are clear
has hinted possibility is near.”
254.
With doubled verse that night inspired by day,
Stel sensed the outline of a tale emerge.
Its seeds sown long ago and far away
best fit divided self of life submerged.
Reintroducing structure lost to page,
she healed herself while seizing power long-schemed.
Eyes tuned in hoping themes that Stel’d encaged
matched unresolved ones that through their heads streamed.
The postings that began in politics
and stretched into critique and life advice
earned Stella trust and cred through scrawl to clicks.
She clutched to neckline stuffed dog who’d sufficed
to animate wild daydreams since her youth
and thanked him as the touchstone of untruth.
CHAPTER 26
255.
Next morning, all arose to lift up peak
in garb whose thermal insulation locked
their warmth quite tightly to their own physique.
Some wore rococo patterns that peacocked,
so indicating they were single and
with interest in companionship. Stel’s coat
was mute and borrowed from Cade secondhand.
Cade’s Forty Niners jacket antidote
to being thought a tourist, worn with pride,
they spent the morning hugging bunny slopes.
Stel liked the feeling when she’d start to glide,
bent knees in surfer style, before her hopes
were pummeled by a fall into a drift
of powder snow. Repeat the fall and lift
256.
enough times in a row, not standing down,
and golly gee, she’d found that balance! Loose
enough to waver, tight for slanting. Frown
wiped off her face for hours, she had deduced
the proper way of snowboarding. Cade had
grown up by sneaking out to kick and push
his skateboard, relic parents thought was bad.
That balance meant he seldom fell on tush
although it was his first time too. They broke
midday to get two Irish coffees, snacks,
and water. Reconvening, followed folk
to kindest blues the mountain had as tracks.
From off the lift on rim of cliff, they gazed.
It steeply dropped. “Well, shit,” Cade paraphrased.
257.
The parallels to page were striking, eyes
cast down the mountain showed a folded sheet,
blank, birthed as such by nature as a prize
to she who’d first beat dawn to mountain meet.
From seated pose, straps closed on boots, Stel felt
pang of past fear of heights matched with recall
of dreamed appropriation of the veldt
as little girl who nature’d first enthralled.
Clad mightily, as swaddled by a god,
she sat immune to temperatures of ice,
intaking landscape whose pristine façade
she’d sully instant board she steered slipped, sliced,
and carved its own designs. Stel felt like fate
had crafted her broad contours, now ornate
258.
contrails were hers to kick up. Hot tub talk
now echoed. Water rights pre-Civil War
still bound the state? Revolt, then; break that lock!
Strange truths cascade from small things come before.
Chat had her viewing every tiny world
as microscopic diorama, sign
of macroscopic province tightly furled,
significance recumbent, fractal-spined.
She wasn’t sure if she’d see everything
in everything there was to see, and hoped
alertness for the detail it did bring
would still remain once she was down the slope,
the beauty on the page her board would draw
in motifs followers alone each saw.
259.
Stel’s eyeballs ranged unstopping ’round the soup
of life face planted in. She lacked right words
for how close-up inspection ever-duped.
A decade out she’d name them, overheard
in lyrics from Fiasco—he said that:
see big worlds have their little worlds that feed
on their velocity. Stel saw how gnats
gnawed carrion, in turn fed bigger breeds
from vaster canopies. The rap went on
said little worlds have lesser worlds and so
on to viscosity. Those fractal spawn
invisible to Stella’s eye, earth’s slow
yet macroscopic brilliance did enchant,
Vanilla Sky -like memory bright implant.
260.
The tip-top steepness menaced. Wide, the run
had room to safely fall. Cade said, “Avoid
that edge that looks Kinkade, the sides a ton
of trees start. Chutes between aren’t to be toyed
with. They look hot, but if you get down close
you’ll drop waist-deep and likely can’t get out.”
Stel looked, agreed that they were grandiose,
invitingly like fairytale quest route
into a dark and secret woods. “But Cade,
they’re such a nice way out.” Twin parallel
tracks showed they’d been traversed by ski brigade.
“That glint in eyes, Stel, drop it. Bears’ll smell
you, wake and hunt you. Rawr!” Fake mitten paws
and beastly face flashed at her, Cade’s plush claws.
261.
With pinprick firefly light as useless guide,
their travels through the undergrowth were not
entirely successful. They supplied
a modicum of safety, as they sought,
but moved them unawares yet further from
the banyan stand they’d set out first to find.
Abu’s thick bag lacked bread: no trail of crumb
could guide once norths and souths were misaligned.
Then Stel burst out exasperatedly,
“Abu, can you please hurry up? We
’re lost.”
“I’m gathering,” he aspirated, “these,”
in tone deterring being further bossed.
He’d fished out oil-less lantern of clear glass
and with bugs’ butts found means to light amass.
262.
They ratcheted their boots to stiffness ten,
Stel checked her straps and balled her fists. Cade’s brief
suggested that, so when she fall again
she won’t break fingers. “Use the falling leaf
if it’s too steep to turn,” he finished, stood,
and dropped into the well that gravity
with proper human intervention could
take him unharmed to base camp. Cavity
not looking any better with more wait,
Stel popped up and began descent on edge,
her goofy stance did reinvigorate
conviction she’d get down without a sledge.
She balanced till her vision ogled patch
of off-piste pine paths. Then a mogul batch
263.
snuck up – she wasn’t looking, after all –
and sent her for a most unpleasant flight.
Airborne exhilaration met landfall,
where, due in part to dearth of Fahrenheit,
the iced ground was as concrete. Impact hurt.
Ameliorating temperature’s shortfall
was fact she flew quite far, out to outskirt
of trail where deep-banked pillow snow forestalled
the shattering of limb on tree. A gulp
of air went down, Stel proved she breathed, relaxed.
Face up, she saw the spiral branches, hulk
of hundred years of effort, tall, unaxed,
commanding little scrutiny except
that of the pausing traveler plunge swept…
264.
The fear became reality as bark
stripped off the limb that levered Abu’s feet,
his body dropped in unexpected arc.
With all his might he pushed, prior to the cleat
dislodging from its perch, toward where the bed
was sitting twenty feet below, its edge
five feet away. He wished he’d further spread
the pad of plants before he climbed, and pledged
that if, when hitting ground, he did survive
he’d never make the same mistake again.
The THUD! that struck as frame to ground arrived
brought water to Stel’s eyes, which saw there, then,
unmoving body strewn across the brink
of ground and bed. She found her heart then sink…
265.
…into the pine’s event horizon. Mines,
those moguls, Stella thought, and laid, and breathed.
This massive evergreen’s but tiny tines,
a million needles soaking light so sheathed,
protectedpinecones some day could drop down
