Where the Sea Used to Be

by Rick Bass

  The moon was brilliant upon them, as if the red cloud of dimness had never been there, and Wallis thought that Colter might be tempted to draw his bow and send an arrow at the great dish of moon, as boys and men have done for centuries, but Colter did not seem tempted by this suggestion, and said that it would seem disrespectful, that he had no cause to hurt the moon.

  Later, after Colter had gone, Mel and Wallis fell asleep sitting on the couch—leaning into one another, and then lying down tangled and sleepy amongst each other. Sometime in the night Mel reached up and pulled a hide over them, and later in the night, still a long way from morning, Mel said, “Whatever is happening between us, we won’t let him break us up, will we?”

  Wallis, still half-asleep, said, “Who? Matthew?” and Mel touched the flannel of his shirt over his chest and said, “No, him,” and Wallis said, “No, of course not,” and then slept deeper, as if diving: but carrying her with him.

  I dream of the malachite woman. I am out for a stroll, nineteen years old, watching the migration of hawks, when she steps into the comer of my vision. The eternal pulsing at my temples, the perpetual dull ache, clears for a moment. She has just stepped from out of the rain. She stands there watching me as if she has traveled so far—across aeons—but can proceed no further. There is mutual fascination. Her hair is long and black. Her green body has been smoothed by the rain and ten thousand pairs of hands. White swirls of marble run vertically through her, the color of cloud streaks.

  I turn and stare at her. If I take one step, she disappears. But she will allow me to watch her, at that several-steps’ distance, forever. The ring of fire encircling my brain is gone; the cauldron within subsides. For long hours I can stand there looking at her, knowing utter peace—appearing surely catatonic to anyone who passes by, but during that time so inwardly and passionately alive that all troubles become stilled—this is the rapture an emerging bulb must feel—but then as if through metachemical stirrings, as dusk seems to fall—the dimness at the perimeters of my vision returning—I find, that I must have and possess her—that even if it were to mean the loss of my life, I must have her.

  And even before I take the first step, she reads my intent, and dissolves. She does not take a step backward—this is how I know she is real! She merely dissolves. I may not see her again for several years.

  The map, to Wallis’s thinking, was fully finished—fully imagined. He split and stacked wood. He went for hikes while Mel was off at school. He would surprise the snowshoe hares and follow their tracks in circles for hours. They would run ahead of him and then stop and stare back with only their black eyes visible amidst the field of snow.

  There was nothing to do but wait for her to get home from school: nothing to do but fall in love with her, like two ropes being braided. A forced move in design space. He understood that it was impossible for them to live together and not have it happen—that either they would hate each other, or love each other. It seemed so basic and inescapable that even Old Dudley and Matthew had predicted it.

  What was unpredictable was how beautiful the specifics were. No man or woman had ever fallen in love in this cabin, hauling these buckets of water from the creek, burning this firewood, and eating this meat; and certainly never in this moment in time, never now. The act’s mundaneness was balanced only by its outrageous specificity.

  It is easy to fit together objects of ragged angularity to form some kind of structural interlocking; how much stranger and rarer, Wallis thought, if two objects of smoothness and roundness can be found to form a fit that is pleasing to both the eye and the touch, and yet will also provide support.

  While he waited for her—puttering around the cabin and walking around in the woods, and leafing through Dudley’s old notebooks of lust and desire—he thought about the difference between loneliness and being alone. It was like walking on a journey, he thought, across a landscape of varying terrain. You just kept walking. It changed, after a while. After a long time the one would probably change to the other, and then after still more distance it would change yet again. You just kept walking. When you felt the peace of solitude, you lingered; when it turned or scribed again to loneliness, then after a while you got up and started walking again.

  They were talking about the malachite woman one evening at dinner. She appeared less and less frequently in the journals, as Dudley had aged—appearing every two to three years in his youth, then five or six, and then finally only about every decade.

  “He had one made,” Mel said. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. It was so sad. He had it sculpted and polished out of stone—malachite and jade. She couldn’t have been anything like what he’d wanted. It was pathetic,” she said, “heartsickening.” She shook her head, remembering. “He had her made in India. She had black eyes—opals. She was, as they say, anatomically correct, to the extent that was possible. Every orifice was present, at least.” She shivered and looked down at her arms as if trapped again by her own blood. “He kept it in one corner of his office, like a drugstore wooden Indian. Everyone who ever visited the office always thought it was art,” she said. “Good God,” she said.

  “Where is it now?” Wallis asked.

  “I haven’t seen it in a long time. I think he got tired of it. I think he probably just threw it away somewhere.”

  Wallis pondered this for a moment: the notion of the jade and malachite statue lying in a forest somewhere beneath a few inches of leaves, or in a creek or stream somewhere, head tipped up out of the water, with the current slowly pressing subtle new curves and hollows into the stone woman. The surprise of some traveler happening upon the artifact in years distant.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Mel said, “there’s no telling. Maybe he passed it on to Matthew, like some kind of damn heirloom.”

  “I’m surprised it’s not in the basement, too,” Wallis said.

  “They’re probably still using it,” Mel said.

  Another foot of snow fell that night. It draped over the cabin, draped over every object in the valley, and pressed down like thumbs or hands sculpting. Some people continued to accept it, receiving the blizzards fully into their hearts, still seeing the snow as the same unremitting beauty when it first began coming in late October; though now a few in the valley began to weaken beneath the psychology of it—bending to avoid snapping, like the trees they continued to hear breaking in the night; and the cold, sprucey scent of new-crushed boughs and trunks and branches continued to fill the valley at all hours, as if somewhere unbeknownst to any of them there was a silent sawmill, forever chewing up fresh fiber and flooding the valley with that scent.

  The deer had herded into larger numbers than ever, and no longer possessed any discernible grace. Their ribs heaved gaunt as they limped along the narrow icy trails of their own making—they slipped often—and yet if they tried to venture off of those trails they would become even more exhausted. Sometimes they would do so, anyway—striking out through the drifts toward the top of some distant, unbrowsed bush, barely visible above the top of the snow—but they would not make it, and would instead simply disappear beneath, like a swimmer going down in heavy surf. They would not rise again, but would come to rest several feet below the surface, where they would remain for the rest of winter, perfectly preserved in the blue grip of ice; and only later, in the spring, would the tips of their ears, and then their heads and shoulders, and then the rest of them, become visible once more; and the coyotes, wolves, ravens, and eagles would gnaw on them as the snows receded, as if the wolves and coyotes were erasing them.

  The rest of the herd would stand there and watch, whenever one of these voyaging deer panicked and struck out in its exhaustion for some new food-tree. If the deer made it and successfully broke a new trail, the others might follow cautiously; but if it disappeared, they might only watch a while longer—waiting for the deer to resurface—but then they would resume their slow procession down the old ice trail, walking with their heads down, relying only on mercy, and the fact that the
wolves might recently have gorged and not be hungry. And the ravens would follow the deer wherever they went, always in attendance.

  As winter deepened, Wallis saw people coming into the bar whom he had never met or even glimpsed before, so that it was to him as if the strangers were emerging from beneath the snow. Some of them came into the bar to drink beer, while others came only to stand by the stove and be warmed, and to stare at their neighbors. Wallis had presumed that these isolated holdouts would have possessed some great eccentricity, one which had sent them into the woods in the first place; but he was surprised to see that, if anything, the February and March stragglers were as normal, or more so, as anyone: more normal-seeming than any other random cross section from the outside world—and he wondered if they had come up to this country angular and eccentric, and had been smoothed and rounded, so that they were now somehow comfortable within themselves. They had about them the air of wild horses, or other wild animals, that had been gentled, if not tamed.

  Some nights it seemed to Wallis and Mel that Danny was avoiding them; other nights, it seemed that he was avoiding everyone; he would not come out of his room. He was looking haggard and depressed, which they attributed to the winter sadness brought about by the short days—but one evening Helen came over to their table and told them that he was ill: that he had been having chest pains and nausea, pain in his shoulder and arm, and stiffness in his face, and that he had told her he didn’t think he had long. His father had blinked out at forty-four; his father’s father at forty-two.

  Danny was forty-nine and had awakened the morning of his forty-fourth birthday from a dream, of his father and had felt his own first angina. For the five years since he had been carrying it with him like an anchor that grew heavier with each passing day, until now, he told Helen, it felt like the wire was stretched trigger-taut: that he could feel the whole works straining to spill out; that no longer could any of the looseness, the sprawl, be held back.

  “He just lies in bed a lot,” Helen said. “Says he doesn’t feel like seeing anyone.”

  “That’s awful,” Mel said, and rose to go in the back to see him, but Helen put a hand on her arm and stayed her.

  “He means it,” Helen said. “He doesn’t want to see anyone, and doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone.”

  “Well that’s crazy,” Mel said. “First off, he can’t just cut himself off like that, like he’s on some damn island or something, and second, it’s not right to put all that weight on you. He expects you and only you to carry him through to the end, and listen to his tale of woe? Bullshit,” Mel said, and started to the back again, but once more Helen stopped her and said, “Please. It is no burden at all.” And Mel saw then that the shadow of Helen’s own time had fallen across her—and the two women stared at each other for a moment, and Mel said, “All right. But what about you? How are you doing?”

  “I’m just old, is all,” Helen said. “It’s not at all the same for me.”

  “But are you all right?” Mel asked.

  “I’m old,” Helen said. She watched the question in Mel’s eyes—saw her doing the arithmetic, wondering who would leave first, Danny or Helen—and Helen said, “It’s not good. He says you could thump him on the chest with your finger and that would be enough to make the whole thing go. He says it feels as if one icicle falls from the porch eave, his heart will follow.” Helen shook her head. “He can’t keep his food down. It’s the end,” she said. “He’s a goner. We’re looking at his ghost, even now.”

  Mel and Wallis skied home in silence, conscious of the rasping sounds of their skis, and of the heat and health of their own hearts. There was nothing that could be asked of their hearts, that evening, that would not be delivered. They had an excess. They skied in silence as a way of honoring that power, and the brevity of the moments in which they would be in possession of it.

  A WOODCUTTER’S TRUCK WENT THROUGH THE ICE ON THE sixth of March, far too late to have been out driving on the frozen river. The mother and father and three sons on board had managed to swim to thicker ice and climb out. It had been a mild day, and though none of them had known how to swim before, they had learned fast.

  They said afterward that the current beneath the ice had been strong. They said they didn’t know how they got back up to the top, or how they’d stayed together: that some force had lifted them back to the top; though they remembered swimming, too—remembered holding their breath and kicking and clawing against the current.

  The woodcutters showed up at the bar that evening to ask for help pulling the truck out. Wallis volunteered. The woodcutters looked at Mel to see what her thoughts were, but could discern nothing. Amy volunteered that she thought things would work out if he did attempt it, for she could tell that the Lord would be with him.

  There were already lanterns burning on the shore and out onto the ice when they got there; perhaps twenty townspeople had gathered, and stood around waiting to help pull. There were four horses also, with harnesses being fastened—a busy, workmanlike rattle of chains, a hopefulness in the air—and there were dogs, whose nervousness out on the ice did not pass unnoticed. No one would hook their truck to the chain—there was the fear that the current might pull that truck down with it. The pulling would all have to be done from shore, where the traction was better, and by hand. Machines were too valuable to be risked.

  Most everyone stood around on the shore at the woods’ edge; only a few men stood with lanterns out on the ice, next to the fissure. They were roped together for safety, and though they joked among themselves as they looked to see if the truck was still down there, their jokes were brittle, and sometimes the joke-tellers would trail off in mid-joke.

  A warming fire was built on shore, and everyone greeted Wallis with great friendliness, but with an odd hesitation, and Wallis realized they were frightened. He walked to the edge of the fissure, looked down, and thought that what he wanted was someone to tell him, No, don’t do it.

  Somebody handed him one of the horse’s blankets to wrap around him as he undressed, and he crouched by the fire, warming himself as much as he could.

  He could hear the torrent of current gurgling and splashing through the gash in the ice. He tried to find a way to say that he had changed his mind—that he wasn’t ready to leave warmth.

  There would be a rope fastened around him so that they could pull him out if he got in trouble, but he worried that the current would be too strong, or that he would slip free of the rope.

  He was seized with the momentary, inexplicable fear that once he went beneath the ice, the entire town would simply let go of the rope, as if desiring or believing it proper that he should meet Zeke’s fate, and that they would simply walk away—appearing to him then through the ice as distant stars.

  Tent-winged caddis flies began appearing, clouds of them drawn to the lanterns. They fluttered against the lamps and burned themselves in such numbers that there was an acrid, smoky smell. Moths got caught in people’s hair and brushed against their faces and arms.

  Wallis wondered what would happen if he spoke out against the confines of what he had already agreed to. Could he ever be trusted again?

  More moths sprung from the woods, from the rotting logs, and caddis flies emerged from the river—all of them spinning toward the lanterns.

  Wallis roped up and walked over to the fissure. Steam rose from his bare skin. He could feel something welling up behind him, coming from the community—a fierce pride and wonder at what he was doing. He sat at the edge of the crevice and dangled his legs in the current. The cold gnawed at his legs. He couldn’t see the truck. He didn’t know whether it lay below or had been carried downstream. For all he knew it could still be traveling.

  There were two older men out on the ice with him—big-bearded men: not just winter beards, but lifetime beards. One of them was smoking a pipe, and Wallis wanted only to stay there and smell that pipe. The men looked huge and clumsy in their heavy clothes and coats. One of them handed Wallis the cha
in and then helped him twine it around his left arm to keep him from dropping it.

  “Don’t get your arm tangled in your rope,” he said. “That would be bad. You’d have to stay down there with it,” he said, and Wallis realized the older man was shaking—that he was terrified of water. Almost no one in the valley knew how to swim.

  Moths continued to swarm the men’s lanterns. Wallis turned for one last look back at the shore, but all he could see was an enormous cloud of caddis flies and moths. Some of the moths caught themselves against the lanterns and ignited to quick flashes of light.

  Wallis stood up again, seized now with hard fear, with doubt. He could feel the water rushing beneath the ice, his bare feet growing quickly numb, even beside the fire. Naked before the village: the village watching him.

  He knew suddenly, surely, that if he went in he would never come back out. He knew it with a certainty so strong it was as if he had already attempted it, and failed, and now was above, watching the subsequent replay of the same old pattern, same old attempt. A feeling stronger than déjà vu.

  Mel, with the rest of the village, stood and watched him. More moth-singe around the lanterns.

  “No,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind,” and he stepped back into his clothes: and he could feel the villagers loosen with relief. They were not disappointed at all, but relieved and, it seemed to him, honored, that he had chosen to stay among them, rather than risk leaving.

  The horses shifted in their traces, chains jingling, and nickered, their muscles tensed and ready to pull: all for naught, but no one minded. They trusted his decision. They shared his certainty—instinct a thing between them as real and physical, as tangible, as a stone that they might pass among them, from one hand to the next.