The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  “You want to help me?” Livy said. “Find me a skiff.”

  When the woman from the clinic came home, Livy was sitting on her steps. The woman let her in and showed her where things were. It was a two-bedroom T1-11 ranch house with brown carpet and couch and a kitchen table with orange place mats. The walls were filled with pictures of children and grandchildren who had left for the mainland.

  “I know they say don’t shower,” the woman said, “but it’s in there if you want.”

  When Livy came out of the shower there was a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of cream of tomato soup on the table for her.

  “The shower help?”

  “Yeah, but I probably shouldn’t have,” said Livy.

  “Those cops would shower if it happened to them. Do you want to sleep? I can set an alarm.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t wake up.”

  “Pull the door shut when you leave then. It’ll lock on its own.”

  * * *

  —

  The skiff left Akutan at what should have been the light of dawn but wasn’t. It took her to the next island, Akun, where she would have to wait. A small plane went from there to Unalaska. She would have to pay for that trip, but the woman assured her it would be less than what she had. The guys who took her across the water warned her that there was nothing on Akun. No services, nothing. It was a rock in the middle of the ocean with a landing strip but there was a place she could wait, a shipping container converted into a holding area next to the tarmac.

  The plane ride was scary as hell and she’d never felt so close to dying. She admired the pilot’s calm. She could see it was a front but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  BOOK 3—METAL SLOVAKIA

  My name it means nothing

  My fortune is less.

  —Lyric by Geezer Butler, wrongly attributed to John Michael Osbourne by an argumentative teen coming down off acid

  36 Lone Pine

  US ROUTE 395 passes between Sacajawea State Park and the Hanford nuclear plant. Over the lands of the Umatilla and the family graveyards of Kennewick Man, over the water-carved Channeled Scablands that dug the Columbia River Gorge and freed the great river, which, now dammed, floods the west with light. Cheyenne drove through the old mining settlements where Chinese workers had lived in “Tiger Towns.” What had Justine said? I want who I am to have nothing to do with anyone else.

  Cheyenne rolled the window all the way down to let in the crystal-clean air. She did eighty miles per hour as the highway slipped south between the mountains through towns founded by speculators who came without permission long ago. Drawn by the promise of the Comstock Lode they drilled and blasted the Virginia Range and the local natives could do little but watch as they went after the silver.

  A generation later, in 1890, a Paiute man with messianic visions manifested a dance. Drawing on elements from other nations, the dance united the spirits of the indigenous dead with those of the living. It infused the People with the powerful magic necessary to halt colonial expansion. Whites who saw it performed, unnerved by the spectral aura around the dancers, called it the Ghost Dance. It spread across the country. In a rage of eerie faith, it scorched the battlefield at Wounded Knee with ghostly fire.

  I want to see through all of this and be free for real.

  Cheyenne spent the first night in a rest area in central Oregon but the cold kept her up. Livy would have had sweatshirts, a fisherman’s cap, and a sleeping bag. Livy would have had money and a plan. Cheyenne had a bucket of peanut butter. At dawn she drove through low hills scorched by the summer fire season. The blackened spears of trees—even with the windows up, the car smelled like smoke. There were patches of green pine where the fire jumped and the sky filled with golden eagles. She spent another terrible night in a rest area. Coming into the Inyo valley she watched for black ice as the sun burned the mist away, exposing the forest floor, a tinder of pine cones, also a ghostly dance.

  The landscape flattened into the foothill canyons and scrub-brush creeks. The Alabama Hills came into view. Named during the Civil War for the Confederate raider CSS Alabama, the hills are where Gunga Din and The Lone Ranger were shot. They are where the Arapaho attacked in How the West Was Won, back when it was greener. They are a dusty gladiatorial arena in ancient Rome. They’re Afghanistan. The Owens River, stolen and forced three hundred miles west by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, no longer feeds the land. It is also a ghost. Haunting aqueducts, disappearing within sight of the sea.

  Cheyenne felt the spook of familiarity everywhere. Justine rode in the car beside her.

  I sense a greatness in myself but I don’t know what kind…

  * * *

  —

  She pulled into a gas station and parked by the bathrooms. She’d had little sleep for two days. Joshua Tree was only half an hour west and would probably have safer places to park her car and nap. Jackson had mentioned that a former student of his, Ben, was living there now. She might be able to find him, though she wasn’t entirely sure how that would go. She and Ben had been close once, and not under the best circumstances. The idea of seeing him made her slightly nauseous. She’d had genuine affection for him at one point. But then again there were a lot of ways to tell the story of those years and most were not a portrait of victory. She doubted she liked his version. Still, in an emergency she wouldn’t feel weird about calling him, maybe, like if she got stabbed. Because that’s the great thing about emergencies: Everyone has to drop everything they think about each other and act like a human. Sadly, her being a fuckup wasn’t an emergency.

  Outside, the Mojave Desert stretched before her. She made a sandwich on the hood of the Toyota. She was lonely. It wasn’t a new feeling.

  A few feet from where she stood the poured concrete of the gas-station parking lot ended and the desert began. She hadn’t expected it to have a sound but it did, a baseline noise of rattlesnakes and sidewinders, camel spiders and drone flies. The wind blew at the back of her legs and through the scrub brush.

  She pulled out the Kennedy half-dollar she’d put in the ashtray. You’ll never go to jail if you’re riding with a Kennedy. She rubbed it between her hands. Heads, straight east to El Paso. Tails, Joshua Tree and a safer place to park for the night. She tossed the coin and caught it and slapped it onto the back of her hand. Heads. Which is why flipping a coin never works.

  37 Blood Tree

  ON THE MAIN ROUTE through Joshua Tree, Cheyenne found a café and ordered a tuna melt. She had been there an hour and the midafternoon sun was streaming through a window when two men came in the back door. They were dressed casually in faded T-shirts, but even from where she sat she could see the expensive watches, the well-made shoes. She had to look twice before she realized that one was Ben. She laughed before she thought of why. Kirsten whispered in her ear…Meant to be.

  “Shut up,” said Cheyenne.

  Ben’s face was leaner than the last time she’d seen him, but he’d been barely out of his teens then. He saw her.

  “Cheyenne?” He came over and wrapped her in a hug. “Man, you look exactly the same. How is that possible?”

  “People’s faces don’t change once they’re adults,” she said. Out of her mouth. The very first thing.

  Ben waved his friend over.

  “Carter. This is Cheyenne,” and the way he said it, she wondered if he had told the man about her; her heart began to race.

  They sat and ordered beer.

  “Have you been to Joshua Tree before?” Carter asked.

  “No. I’m just passing through. My mom’s in a monastery on the East Coast. I’m going to visit.”

  “What kind of monastery?” asked Carter.

  “She was Zen but now I think it’s nothing.”

  “Man, I can’t believe you’re here.” Ben turned. “Cheyenne and I met when I was in college.” />
  “I wasn’t a student,” said Cheyenne.

  Carter looked confused.

  “She was married to my American studies professor,” said Ben. “I was in the student union with friends talking shit about this one professor who insisted on calling all six of us on campus who weren’t white African Americans. One dude is English. Two from Jamaica. One from Brazil. So only two of us are actually American. We were drunk and obnoxious and torturing the pale kids so we started polling the other students: Hey! What am I? We get the usual, black, African American, tan—yes seriously, fucking tan—one poor frosh mewls, ‘A person of color?’ and the other American yells, ‘No, man. This is the USA. I’m a person of interest.’ ” Ben laughed. “The guy just scurries away. Then the Brit sees Cheyenne. ‘Oi, what do you call this?’ He holds my arm up. ‘Carob,’ she says. ‘Carob? What the fuck is carob?’ he says. I told him people raised by hippies never learn their colors.” Ben smiled at her. “And that’s how we met.”

  Carter laughed. Cheyenne did too. But why that story?

  “Remember Elan Marquez?” said Ben. “He’s out here too.”

  She felt a prick of nerves.

  “I’ll check on the beer,” said Carter and went to the counter.

  A line had formed. He was going to be a minute. Ben turned back to her.

  “That was a rough time back then,” he said.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “I don’t want it to be weird.”

  “You know it’s not like I was a million years older,” she said. “You were an adult.”

  “But there is a difference. Between twenty-seven and nineteen.”

  Cheyenne looked at the door. “I felt out of place. I think I thought you did too,” she said.

  “It’s not like it was just me.”

  “What I did was tacky but it wasn’t criminal,” said Cheyenne in a low voice.

  “You were part of the institution, though. A professor’s wife? That’s power.”

  “Don’t act like I was the first married person there to fuck up by sleeping around or having sex with a student.”

  “Students.”

  She started to get up and he put out his hand.

  “I’m not trying to be a jerk,” he said. “You’re right. It was a bad time for everyone. I just didn’t want it to go unsaid.”

  “No, of course not.”

  He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

  Cheyenne looked out the window. She had many hours of driving ahead.

  Carter arrived with beer. “You should stay the night,” he said. “We’re having a massive party. Half the town will be sleeping over. I’m sure you can crash there.”

  “You should,” said Ben, “for real. We can all meet up later.”

  She felt a sense of relief. She would sleep and lay a bad situation to rest. Maybe some things are meant to be.

  * * *

  —

  The directions were easy; she found the place and parked where she was told. The party was being held jointly by two households, neighbors. Carter said they were putting meat on the grill about five. There was a fire pit set up on the property line of the land between them and both houses had food and drink. By the time Cheyenne got there at least forty people were already milling around. It was past seven, but the grill wasn’t hot yet and guests were raiding the houses for chips, eating what garnishes could be found, and filling up on beer.

  Someone offered her a beer and a shot. She took it and explored the property. She ran into Carter and a little while later she saw Ben by the fire pit and went over.

  He looked at her as if she were a stranger. She thought he was playing and laughed. He turned and walked away. It took her a second to realize he meant it. She ran to catch up, rifling through a catalog of their interaction for whatever she might have accidentally said.

  “Did I do something?” she asked.

  He refused to look at her and kept walking toward one of the houses. She stopped. Her skin got hot with panic and she didn’t want to cry in front of strangers. She headed up the road to go but when she got to where she’d parked, the Toyota was blocked in on all sides by rows and rows of cars. The party had turned into a bash. She was there until morning.

  Trudging back to the party she made a plan: avoid the houses, blend into crowds, sleep in the car. She was starving, though, and the smell of meat and smoke was driving her crazy. People were lining up by the grill but she was afraid to go over in case Ben and Carter were there, so she joined the group at the fire pit. The woman next to her passed her a bottle of tequila that was going around. A little while later the same woman said she was going to get food and Cheyenne asked her to get a sausage for her. Eating something made her feel a little less insecure, and when it was fully dark she hazarded a trip to one of the houses for a glass of water.

  In the kitchen doorway she saw Carter and his girlfriend by the sink talking to Ben, and she stepped back. They were talking about her.

  “That’s fucked up,” said Carter. “I’m surprised you were so nice to her. It says a lot about who you are, man.”

  “I thought I could let it go but then I thought, why? And get this,” said Ben, “not one white guy. Not one.”

  “That’s serious slave and master’s wife shit,” said Carter.

  Cheyenne wanted to scream. Half of those guys were princes! Princes with actual servants. She hadn’t even known people like that were real. Or went to college. She thought they were just in books. The loneliness of being on that campus hit her like it was happening again. She couldn’t take it. She stalked into the kitchen, went over to the sink, and found a glass. She filled it with water, drank it, filled it again, and turned to Ben.

  “You know you shouldn’t be so proud of yourself. I kissed my little brother four years before I ever met you. Talk about an uneven power dynamic,” she said and realized what a horrible mistake she’d made.

  An hour later, she was still trying to tell the story right to a man she’d cornered on the porch.

  “He was only, what, seventeen? Hadn’t been to school for almost two years. My mom, well she might be my mom—but I really truly hope not because she tortures you with mystical archetypes, it borders on abusive—said Essex was going to end up as muscle for some second-rate dealer so I said I’d kiss him in front of his friends if he got his GED. My point is that there are reasons. Even feeling out of place somewhere. That’s a reason. But then sometimes you make a mistake and end up having sex with bratty little scions and princelings, which is problematic—problematize, by the way, is not a real word and neither is othering. It’s just a bunch of bullshit people say to lock the gate behind them. Anyway Essex always wanted to kiss me and he had his GED in under a week. Know what he used that for? ‘This only takes a signature.’ ” She waved her hands. “ ‘This only takes a signature.’ ”

  * * *

  —

  On the periphery she heard a name, Dhamma Dena. It rang her mind but in her current state she couldn’t attach it to anything. Dhamma Dena.

  The fire was raging and she was shivering so she went back to it. Staring into the blaze, she reminded herself over and over that none of these people mattered. The second she left, they’d be gone too. I want nothing I am to have to do with anyone else. I want nothing I am to have to do with anyone else. I want nothing I am to have to do with anyone else.

  * * *

  —

  The guy next to her was talking about DMT and freight train this and freight train that and can you believe there hasn’t been a band called Machine Elf? Oh there is? Are they any good? She couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. 2C-T2, 2…who fucking knows. I’m totally game to try it, the man was saying, I just can’t promise what it’s going to be but it’s designed by the same guy—

  “Try what?” she interrupted. “What are you
talking about?”

  “A psychedelic a friend gave me. It’s supposed to be in the 2C family, similar to T2T7 but doesn’t last as long, maybe a little more like DMT.”

  “Do you have some here?” she asked.

  “It might be pretty visual and it’s definitely going to have some kind of a body rush. Have you done stuff like this before?”

  “Probably. I do a lot of things, apparently.”

  He looked a little hesitant.

  “And I’m a fucking adult.”

  Cheyenne swallowed the capsules he handed her.

  Within half an hour the drug hit Cheyenne like a building collapse.

  She came to on the edge of the party in the dark. Pinned to the sandy ground, she toggled between two types of hallucination: the kind you have with your eyes closed and the kind you have with your eyes open.

  Closed, she saw three people and a fiery barge they were pushing into the current of a wide river. There was also a cave with a chattering golden skull surrounded by human leg bones.

  Open, she saw cubes and Cartesian planes and some strange triangles covered in flames. Most of the triangles were walking around but there was one big one in the center, which turned out to be a bonfire. The others turned out to be people.

  It took her a while to remember that she was also a person. But even in the moments when she did remember she was a person, a person with relationships to other people, she was afraid to move because there was something wrong with them. There were rules. Because you treat some of them one way and some another. If they’re strangers you’re not supposed to touch each other, but then you’re also not supposed to touch some of the ones you do know. She didn’t think she could keep it straight. She knew there was a Ben and a Carter but wasn’t certain she’d recognize them by their faces. To be careful, she stayed where she was. Eyes closed, golden skull. Eyes open, triangles. She sat back down and watched the stars move. The world like a bowl around her.