Where the Sea Used to Be

by Rick Bass

  Helen protested and tried to think of a way to detain him—wanting, somehow, to warn him of Mel’s and Wallis’s new bond, but unable to find the words—and trying to hold him back now would have been like trying to catch flowing water with one’s bare hands. She loaned him her snowshoes and a coat, and he kissed her again and was out the door running, stumbling: and for a moment, just as he disappeared into the snow, she saw him for what he was—a middle-aged man, not quite a savage, not quite a businessman, not much of anything anymore—but then the snow swallowed him, and she was able, in his absence, to recast him once more into something strong and durable and heroic. She gathered the albums and carried them back upstairs, having to pause three times on the way up to catch her breath. Her own tattery heart hammering against her ribs like the drumming of a flicker against a rotting snag.

  He went down not two hundred yards from the cabin: the cabin not yet in sight, though he recognized the trail, and could smell the wood smoke. With breathlessness and lightness he pitched forward. He knew utter weakness, utter helplessness, and felt a deep, abiding regret, as he sank facedown through the snow, knowing he would not be getting up again. He pissed in his pants, lay there motionless and warm for a while, and then the world went dark. But this time there was neither sorrow nor regret at his incompletion—only a darkness so total that there could not be a response to it. He was simply swallowed, and he tucked his head and slept, like a bird with its head beneath its wing.

  Colter came across him two hours later; he had been out hunting for antlers and had cut Matthew’s floundering new trail, had followed him to where the faint tracks ended. A couple of inches of snow lay atop Matthew’s crumpled form, and Colter excavated him, wrestled his limp body up over his shoulders, and then managed to stagger those last couple hundred yards up to the cabin, falling several times but then rising again.

  Mel and Wallis heard the commotion and ran to see what it was—believing at first that it was the wolverine again—and when Mel saw Matthew’s frost-blued face and his whitened lips, she shrieked. Wallis’s immediate reaction was one of relief, that Matthew was in such dire straits—so diminished. Wallis tried to stop himself from feeling that relief but was alarmed further when the relief spread to pleasure. He feared that such ungenerous feelings might be the result from having been studying Old Dudley’s notebooks, or that the skull-grip of winter was altering his brain.

  They dragged him in, foul-smelling as any wolverine, and laid him by the fire. They stripped his clothes from him, dried him and wrapped him in towels, and began rubbing his hands and feet, trying to get his blood circulating again. His pulse was down to thirty-two; his temperature, ninety-one. His eyes were catatonic. But slowly the fire warmed him, as did their ministrations, and his pulse rose to the low forties, and his pupils began to dilate. As his core temperature returned slowly, his breath began to form vapor clouds once again, and his fingers and eyelids twitched in dream state.

  Later he sat up and looked around for a couple of seconds, then lay back down.

  Mel sponged him clean and dressed him, and they carried him into the middle room where each year he took his convalescence. They pulled the shades, piled elk hides atop him for warmth, then went out into the bright sunlight to go skiing. Mel skied upvalley by herself, to be alone and think, and Colter and Wallis skied downvalley to look for more antlers. There was very much the feeling among them that Matthew had not returned on his own free will, but that instead they had captured a wild animal and brought it in from the woods: that they had altered some basic flow of nature, and that where he really belonged was down in the groove he had cut for himself: prone in the snow, two feet below the surface, and two hundred yards from the cabin.

  Monsters of a Buried World

  Valiant Behemoths Claimed by Ice

  Some very remarkable facts have come to light from northern Siberia. That inhospitable region was once a home for tropic loving elephants. Only a hundred years ago, their carcasses were known to exist in Siberia imbedded in solid ice. The first discovery was on the borders of the Aleseia River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean. The body was still standing erect and perfect. The skin remained in place, and the hair and fur were still attached.

  The most celebrated discovery was made in 1799. A Tungusianfisherman named Schumachoff was exploring along the coast of the frozen ocean for ivory. He noticed in a huge block of clear glacier ice a dark, strange object deeply imbedded. His savage curiosity was not strong enough to lead him to undertake the work of exploration. In 1801, however, the melting of the ice had exposed a portion of the carcass. It was a beast like those whose ivory lay strewn along those frozen shores. In 1804, the Tungusian was able to return and remove the tusks.

  In 1806, Mr. Adams, who was collecting for the Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg, found the rest of the carcass still on the shore, but greatly mutilated. It appeared that the Yakutski had regaled their dogs upon the flesh; and bears, wolves, wolverines, and foxes had gladly feasted too. Thus this priceless relic of a prehistoric world was allowed to waste away. But it was not completely lost to science; the skeleton still remained. The tusks were repurchased, and the whole was transported to St. Petersburg, where the mounted specimen at present stands, in the Imperial Museum.

  In 1843, a mammoth was found by Middendorf in so perfect a state that the bulb of the eye is still preserved in the museum at Moscow.

  The same mammoth dwelt in our country, in Alaska. His tusks are extensively sought and sold for ivory. This utilization of the ivory—products of an age in which civilization had not yet appeared to learn the value of the product—recalls our reflection on the fossilization of sunlight for a more suspicious period. All these things were wasted, before our grand arrival.

  The great original skeleton standing in the museum at St. Petersburg was duplicated at Stuttgart under the direction of Dr. Fraas, from various bones collected from different parts of Europe. Dr. Fraas, from samples of skin and hair still existing, ventured to give the extinct mammoth a complete restoration. Professor Ward, the great museum-builder of America, saw this monster of mammoths standing in the Museum at Stuttgart and purchased it.

  Transporting it to Rochester, he reared a duplicate, which stood for months in the Ward Museum, where when I was twenty-two I had the opportunity of subjecting the creature to a careful study. Let us go back and repeat the visit.

  As we enter the door of the building which has been erected for the beast, a dark mountain of flesh arises before us. We had gauged our apprehension to the familiar bulk of the elephant, but here the eye must be lifted to a higher altitude. The whole thought must swell to take in the idea of the towering form which looms above us and frowns darkly and severely down upon us. The monster’s brow rises like some old granite dome, weather-beaten and darkened by the lapse of ages.

  Two winding streams of ivory descend like glaciers from the base of the dome, while the corrugated and beetling proboscis swells between them. Serene and motionless this majestic form stands awaiting our wonder and adoration. No astonishment disconcerts it; no exclamations stir a feature.

  Unlike the dumb mountain, however, this form seems in a mood of contemplation. All this dark and towering mass is conscious. There are eyes which take cognizance of our movements; there are ears which take in the sounds of our voice. This creature contemplates us; he throws a spell over us; he has us in his power.

  The mammoth! Aye, the mammoth of mammoths! With long breath, after this suspense of amazement, we extricate ourselves from his spell, and meet his overpowering stare with the force of intelligent will. He is but a beast—let us analyze the sources of his power over us.

  He stands sixteen feet in height. His extreme length is twenty-six feet, and the distance between the tips of his tusks is fourteen feet. The sole of his foot is three feet in diameter. His tusks are fourteen feet long and one foot in diameter.

  Between his short, postlike forelegs a man can stand upright with his hat on, without touching the animal
’s body. The whole exterior is clothed with dark shaggy hair, quite unlike the modern elephants, and under the throat it attains a length of twelve to fifteen inches. The testicles weighing fifty pounds each.

  Here the old Siberian mammoth enjoys his bodily resurrection. Dr. Fraas was the angel of the resurrection and has made him as nearly as possible like his ancient self. Dr. Fraas is an eminent anatomist and geologist, and we trust his judgment and his veracity.

  Matthew slept, if it could be called sleep, in a perfect shell of stillness. At first they tiptoed past his room and were careful not to bang pots or pans, but gradually they became comfortable with his sleeping presence. Helen came by to check on him, and stayed with him for some time that first night, not even touching him—afraid of waking him and disrupting his rest. She sat there, watching, until her own head drooped, and she slept too. She slept upright next to him, wrapped in a bear robe that Mel came in and placed around her as she dozed, so that at a glance to anyone who did not know, it would have appeared that a bear was standing guard over Matthew—waiting for him to awaken.

  Commerce blossomed; everyone could feel winter sliding away, could feel the mass of it behind them, perhaps vanished from all of the earth. It was still as snowy as ever, but the days were longer and brighter, so that they could feel winter pulled away, like the husk of one thing pulled back to reveal its true self.

  The geese were funneling into the valley, and all kinds of ducks. Mergansers gabbled and dived; anywhere there was an open hole of water, the diving birds found it, exploited it, like roots trying to stretch open a fissure—as if the ducks and geese, with their energy alone, could crack open the winter and find spring beneath.

  Human commerce blossomed, too, amongst the sound of dripping, and the goose music; more people began coming to town, and staying longer.

  They shoveled away the snow and sat on the wooden steps in front of the saloon and drank mugs of beer and looked directly into the sun and rolled up their sleeves and tried to feel the sun on their arms. Some of them shut their eyes and sat very still, as if hoping the sun were some wild animal that would draw closer—as if they could better feel the faintest stirs of warmth by remaining motionless.

  Always, they asked about Matthew. There was a wager on when he would awaken. Because the river was still frozen, families continued to drive up and down it in their trucks, scouting for fallen trees to cut into firewood, and to skid out for house logs with which to build new structures, or to repair the old ones. The trees grew largest right along the riverbanks, and each year a good number of them leaned out too far and finally crashed, making the ice shudder and split, though the trees would not break through. Their limbs would snap and skitter across the ice. The deer would hear the tree fall and turn and run toward it, to browse the black lichen that had been in the highest branches.

  The trucks moved up and down the river like ships. The children rode in the back, so that if a mysterious weak spot should be encountered—one of the tires punching through the ice—the children could leap free—but almost always the river held, tight as cast concrete. The truck that had gone through the ice earlier was viewed to have been an anomaly, simple bad luck, rather than the pattern of anything to come. The drivers carried a bucket of gravel in the back to sprinkle under the tires for traction whenever they hit a slick spot and got stuck; but by and large the sleeping river was as well behaved as a freeway, and the mother and father, in the front, would scout for the new-fallen trees, and would stop next to one when they found it. Sometimes several trucks would be cruising the ice at any one time, and the river rang with the sound of chain saws, and there was the scent of freshly cut lumber. The families would picnic, with everyone doing a chore—gathering the lengths to cut into firewood, or splitting the firewood into stovesized pieces. Sometimes one of the family members would cut a hole in the ice with the chain saw and ice-fish as the wood cutting continued. All manner of energy was returning—sexual, too, so that men and women—husbands and wives—seemed happier together.

  And when the truck was full of split wood and a log had been chained to be skidded behind the truck, they would drive home—the children sitting high atop the mountain of wood, colder now in the wind, and with the gold sun falling behind the evergreen ridges—a corona from behind the ridge, and then the pulsing blue and pink light of dusk. The trucks drove with their headlights on, moving upstream now, and the ice cracked and groaned but did not break, and all across the river they saw the huge-footed paddings, the comings and goings of the wolves—each track so large that it looked as if the valley were filled with wolves; and yet no one ever saw them. They saw the wolves’ deer kills out in the river’s center and along its edges—the frozen mounds of hide and bones, with the ravens and bald eagles crowded around as if at a banquet—but the wolves were always gone by that time, and the coyotes would skitter away as the trucks went past, and some of the ravens would take flight while others remained on the frozen shells of carcasses. The bald eagles would turn and watch with snowy heads and fiery eyes, hooked beaks and bright yellow legs claiming the deer fiercely.

  The river ice changed colors throughout the days, absorbing the various slants of sunlight—pink and then milky blue and then greenish and then bright white, then flame orange at sunset, as if something were alive beneath the river.

  At night the warming fires that the families had built next to their work burned brightly long after the families had driven home—yellow flames sawing ragged against the darkness, and growing smaller quickly—and the silhouettes and moon shadows of deer came from out of the woods, passing in front of and between the fires to get to the limbs and brush piles—and the deer walked past and around the occasional remnant of carcass, and the river creaked as it froze tighter in the night after loosening a bit during the day: but whispered, too, as it began to consider its further release.

  The northern lights swam silently above, rolling in sheets and waves across the sky—pulses of electric green and blood light reflected in the ice.

  More wolves were now only days away from being born. Mel wondered how she would be able to resist going back into the woods to track the weave of their stories. She might just as well take her data from all the years previous and toss it over a cliff.

  During the thirty minutes she taught each day, she sometimes took the students outside, and they went down to the river and listened to the faint crackings, and placed their hands on the thinning ice. They felt the tremblings of the river beneath.

  With binoculars, they identified the birds coming into the valley now—the birds following the edges of the river, and filtering through the woods—crossbills, nuthatches, thrushes, kinglets—and she placed blindfolds over the students and taught them to identify birds by their music—taught sound as a kind of sight.

  The ice continued to change colors. She cautioned them to stay off of it, and to keep their families off of it, no matter how badly they needed firewood.

  They walked around the melting puddles and caught frogs and salamanders. They stood in the sunlight and examined them, learned their names and habits. Belle and Ann found that the students’ increased knowledge of how things worked in their valley gave the students an increased confidence in the world, and a hunger, and that for the rest of the day they were better able to learn other lessons.

  The geese kept arriving—noisy as trains, and in numbers so great that it gave the impression that all the land to the south was just as wild as the valley itself. As if the geese were sewing together places of similarity.

  The children wanted to know when Matthew would awaken. They had never known him as anything other than someone their parents told stories about. They welcomed him each spring not as a native but as an odd visitor. They could see that Wallis was sweet on Mel now—many mornings he accompanied her to school and kissed her lightly before she went in the building—and they were not bothered by this shift in allegiance, not having the history against which to measure such a change in loyalty. They v
iewed it as no more spectacular or unusual than any other seasonal passing.

  In the swamps and ponds the ice thinned and grew transparent. The sunlight passed through those opaque layers and became trapped beneath the ice, as if in a greenhouse, warming the waters so that in the muck and mire things were beginning to grow, and yet without oxygen, so that fetid, powerful gases strained against those ice caps; and whenever and wherever the sun’s warmth could pierce a small hole in the ice, those gases would vent, sour and sulfuric—odors so dense it seemed they possessed colors—greens and golds, like the songbirds that would soon be returning from South America—and no one minded the powerful odors, but felt instead invigorated by them. The waters in the ponds and lakes and swamps began to turn over, recycling their layers of nutrients—bottom layers of water rising heat-stirred to the top, and upper ice-cooled layers sinking—and it was possible, in that growing sunlight, to believe that one could be similarly strengthened, just from breathing that air.

  “This is water howellia,” Mel said, holding a plant in her hands in the classroom—five minutes of her time left, before she had to lapse into silence. “It’s not found anywhere else in the world. This valley created it.” A glance at the clock. “Here’s a sedge,” she said, pulling another specimen from her bag. “This is what the grizzlies graze on in the spring to help purge their systems after the long winter’s sleep. It helps clean out the toxins,” she said.