Liv Pomeroy fixed herself another gin and quinine and reread her father’s pamphlet for the first time in years. She sighed. Bugs Pomeroy. She remembered him as a tall, athletic man, with only a sprinkling of social graces. The pamphlet was absolute proof that he had been a poor scientist, a madman, and saddest of all, a fraud.
Part one, describing the beetle in physical terms, was loaded with inaccuracies; one must assume he meant millimeters, not centimeters in the description of the geniculate antennae, for example, which made the sulfur beetle “unique”—a unique feature shared by beetles worldwide. The “sex legs” was obviously a typographical error. But most embarrassing was the nonstop sequence of sentimental superlatives and anthropomorphic gushing: “Nowhere else in nature is there such a perfect example of yellowness.” Good lord. “The Wanqong believed, quite accurately, that yellow is the color of life itself.” Good lord. “Light as a fairy and twice as beautiful, this marvelous beetle is a gift from the gods.”
End of chapter. No wonder they called him Bugs.
The chapter on “the quest for perfection,” the life cycle, was a grab-bag of romanticism, with repressed sexuality leaking out the seams. “The larvae stretch, swell, and grow glorious, responding joyfully to the warm tickle of the water.…” Ye gods. “Yearning, yearning the pupa waits….” Good lord. “Finally she comes forth, her sex legs (there it was again) all awiggle, ready for the ultimate expression of physical love which is that humming, throbbing love that drives us all to Almighty God.” Holy festering Jesus.
But Chapter 3 was different. The tragedy of Mathilda Springs, and tragedy it was. He was right about that, even if he got the year wrong. The poor man. Those poor people.
Chapter 4 concerned Pomeroy’s return to Hope Springs, California, where he claimed to have discovered a thriving population of Coleoptera hydrophilidae mathilda. A complete fabrication. The sulfur beetles weren’t native to California at all, any more than the jacaranda or the wild horse. The old man planted the bugs there. Another reason not to get involved in some silly scheme to protect this “endangered species.”
There had been another pamphlet, a bit more scientific although every bit as poetic and doting. But the professor had destroyed every copy he could get his hands on just before leaving Australia forever. If any copies of Paradise Found remained, they were in the hands of the heirs of the New South Wales Mining Company, Ltd., which had gone bankrupt during the 1930s, having exhausted their own resources faster than they could exhaust Australia’s.
Remembering stories he had told her over tiffin, tea, and gin, Liv Pomeroy felt she knew the entire story of her poor father’s life, although her own memories went back no farther than the outback, and the home she had lived in before she watched it being blown to bits.
Doctor Livingston Pomeroy, the world-famous Tasmanian entomologist, reached for the telephone and dictated the following telegram to be sent to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Times in London, Time, Nature, Scientific American, the United States National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Anacapa County Board of Supervisors, the Anacapa County Planning Commission, the Anacapa County Chamber of Commerce, and the manager or owner of the Hope Springs Hotel in or near the town of Tecolote, Anacapa County, California, U.S.A.
WHEN THE SULFUR BEETLE WAS THOUGHTLESSLY ERADICATED FROM MATHILDA SPRINGS IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY OF AUSTRALIA, THE SPRINGS DRIED UP AND SCORES OF OTHER SPECIES PERISHED. AMONG THE VICTIMS WERE THE GENTLE WANQONG PEOPLE WHO HAD LIVED IN THAT VALLEY PEACEFULLY FOR CENTURIES AND WHOSE SOPHISTICATED CALENDAR REVOLVED AROUND RITUALS TO HONOUR THE SULFUR BEETLE. THANKS TO MAN’S EXPLOITATIVE GREED, THE NONLITERATE BUT NONETHELESS RICH CULTURE OF A NEARLY PERFECT SOCIETY HAS BEEN LOST FOREVER. WHAT REMAINS AT MATHILDA SPRINGS IS AN UGLY WASTELAND. THE MINERAL RESOURCES FOR WHICH WHITE MEN WERE WILLING TO RASE THE LANDSCAPE WERE EXHAUSTED WITHIN TWO YEARS. NOW THE MATHILDA BEETLE IS THREATENED AGAIN, AT HOPE SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA, THE ONLY PLACE LEFT ON EARTH WHERE THIS REMARKABLE SPECIES IS KNOWN TO SURVIVE. THE PRECIOUS BALANCE OF OUR PLANET’S ECOLOGY AND THE FRAIL CULTURE OF HER HUMAN CUSTODIANS CANNOT AFFORD THE LOSS OF THIS HARMLESS, PERFECT INSECT. (SIGNED) LIVINGSTON POMEROY, R.A.E.S., PH.S., SC.E.B., NOBEL LAUREATE.
She hung up the phone, then lifted the receiver again. She placed another telegram:
IT’S ALL TOMMYROT, YOU UNDERSTAND. JUST A SILLY BUG, MIND.
This one she sent only to herself.
Then she got up from her desk and went into her bedroom to pack her suitcase for the long journey back to California.
———
The next day a Harley Davidson roared up the Hope Springs driveway and halted in front of the hotel. A hefty young woman in jeans and a leather helmet dismounted, trotted up the steps to the verandah, and rang the doorbell. When Casey opened the door she said, “Western Union,” and held out a yellow envelope. Casey signed for the telegram, thanked the messenger, offered her a soak in the bathhouse, and said goodbye when she declined. “Thanks again,” he said.
“You know, you really ought to get the county to pave your road. This road is a bitch.” She turned the Harley around, mounted, got the machine roaring, and took off in a cloud of dust, leaving a spray of gravel.
Casey walked back into the lobby, sat down at the front desk, opened the envelope, and pulled out the telegram. He read it, reread it twice, then went out on the verandah to beat on the triangle and summon the staff for a meeting.
When the entire community was seated in a circle on the carpet of the library, Casey read the telegram from Livingston Pomeroy, Junior.
The group response was a collective silence. Then Diana began the applause, and smiles lit up the faces of nearly all the yellow people.
“What’s the matter, Arthur?” Theresa asked. “You don’t think this is great news?”
“You’d better get this into the hands of the stooges at the Ag Department of Cal Poly right away, before they certify that our beetle is the Mediterranean fruit fly,” Arthur said. “If they haven’t already done so, that is. Otherwise we’re in for a serious, massive malathion blitz.”
“Good point,” Casey said. “Anybody going into town today?”
Karen raised her hand.
Casey said, “Karen, I’d like you to get a dozen photocopies of this document, and mail one copy special delivery to Cal Poly. You can get their address from the library. The library has a Xerox machine, too. Anything else we should get stressed out over, Arthur?”
“Wiring,” Arthur said. “We’ll never get a license to operate a hotel without wiring, up to code.”
“But we don’t have any wiring, because we don’t have electricity,” Larry reminded him. “Where is it written you need electricity to operate a hotel?”
“Somewhere,” Arthur answered. “Probably.”
Nellie said, “Who cares? We’ve got plenty of money, and we can hire an electrician to get this hotel wired, if it’s required. Then the county will have to connect us to the grid, which is their problem.”
“What else, Arthur? You’re still shaking your head.”
“The road department is scheduled to tear up our road.”
“And replace it with a paved road,” Karen said. “Frankly, I wouldn’t mind, and if it means delaying the opening by a few weeks, so be it.”
“Then there’s the chlorine problem. We’re required to have a chlorination system for the baths. How are we going to do that? The water is a steady flowing stream, into bath six, then flowing through all the other baths while it cools down, then it leaves the bathhouse from bath one and empties into the creek. There’s no way we can chlorinate a moving stream.”
“It’ll be okay,” Emily promised. “It will work out.”
“How do you figure that, Emily? It’s a stupid regulation, but if it’s the law—”
“It’ll be fine,” Emily insisted. “We just have to focus our energies.”
“And all think positive thoughts?” Arthur said. “Right?”
“You shoul
d give it a try, Arthur,” Beatrice said. “Couldn’t hurt.”
———
The following Tuesday morning at nine o’clock Craig Gordon, the Anacapa County Health Inspector, drove into Hope Springs and parked his Oldsmobile in front of the hotel. He had no appointment. Unscheduled investigations usually yielded the most productive findings, but you had to be careful not to seem harassing or invasive. It was a delicate matter nowadays, what with liberal lawyers ready to defend immorality at all levels of society.
Craig walked up the steps and knocked on the front door of the hotel. No one answered. He stood there on the verandah, squinting across the driveway at the outlandish outbuilding, whose dark wood walls seemed to sweat in the morning sunlight. He shuddered at the memory of his previous visit to this place, and the lewd behavior he had witnessed inside that building. He hoped he would not be subjected to such a sight again, but if it came to that, he had a job to do and he would do it.
He knocked again. Nobody.
This place really smelled. If he had his way, he’d shut this hippie commune down on the basis of its odor alone, but they don’t let you do that anymore. Nowadays you have to have some kind of chemical proof of contamination or danger, or you have to catch them on an infraction of regulations. That’s why Craig Gordon was here today, unannounced, breathing this foul air. Infraction. Chemical proof.
Finally the door opened and the blond woman came out. The cook, Miss Pearson. She smiled and said, “Can I help you?”
“Miss Pearson,” he said, “I’m Craig Gordon, remember? Health inspector?”
“Oh yes. Right,” she said. “What can I do for you? Have you been waiting long? The door’s unlocked. It’s a hotel lobby. You’re welcome to come in.”
“You’re not a hotel yet,” he reminded her.
“Well, please come in.”
“Actually, I don’t have time for that,” he told her. “I’m just following up on my last visit. There was a test I wasn’t able to do last time, because they were cleaning the pools in that building over there.”
“The baths.”
“They’re not cleaning them now are they?” Craig asked.
“No. Yesterday, why?”
“Well that’s a relief,” Craig said, feeling a bit disappointed. That young woman he’d seen cleaning the pool last time had haunted his daydreams ever since. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over there and perform a test on the water. It’s part of the routine examination. You don’t mind, do you?”
He watched her face darken, her lip twitch.
“Don’t you need some kind of a warrant to do a thing like that?” she asked.
He smiled. “Miss Pearson, this isn’t an arrest. I’m just trying to complete the routine examination I began a month or so ago. As I remember, your kitchen was spotless. No problems there at all.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“So with your permission, I’d like to do one chemical test on the water in those swimming pools. Would you like to accompany me and watch?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the water in the baths,” Miss Pearson said.
“Of course not. It will give me great pleasure to give this entire place a clean bill of health. But until I check the water, I can’t technically authorize its use for public recreation. I told Miss Hope that when I was here before. Those pools are off limits to the public at this time, and any report of any infraction, including any attempt on your part to interfere with my routine examination, will result in ruling against allowing this place to operate as a hotel. Ever. The simplest thing would be to have me do this one-minute test and be done with it. Otherwise I’ll come back on Saturday, when I have more time, and I’ll bring Sheriff Higgins with me, just in case I find any infractions.”
Miss Pearson nodded, the smile gone from her face. “Let’s go, then,” she said.
Craig stopped at his car to get his testing kit. “Nice day,” he remarked as they crossed the driveway. She did not answer. As they walked up the steps of the odd outbuilding, he tried again. “It’s been a beautiful spring.”
“Here we are,” she said. “Come on in and get it over with.”
They entered the steaming warm building and Craig’s glasses fogged up. He took them off and wiped them on his necktie. When he put them back on he saw a man with a mop of curly red hair sitting in one of the pools, grinning back at him.
He turned to Miss Pearson and asked, “Does that man have a bathing suit on?”
“I doubt it,” she answered.
“Because I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” he added.
She snorted. At that, the red-headed man stood up. He was naked to the waist, but from there on down he was clad in sopping-wet plaid golf slacks. He climbed out of the water and bowed, then padded out of the building, leaving a trail of puddles behind him.
“Now then,” Craig said, opening his test kit. “Miss Hope assured me a chlorination system would be installed here, and I took her word for it, although I don’t see any such system in evidence. But I expect it exists. So what I’m going to do…” He held out a small rack with a row of glass tubes. “…is fill these test tubes with water from the pools. It’s all the same water in all of these pools, I understand. I only have to do this once, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Very good.” He knelt before the first pool and dipped his tubes into the water and filled them. He set the case on a bench and said, “Now we add the drops. I put one drop in this tube, two in this one, three here, and so on. If the chlorination system is working properly, the tube on the left will remain clear and the one on the right will be bright red, but number four, right in the middle, will be a beautiful, clean amber, the color of this chart. See? Ready?”
“And if it doesn’t work out that way?” Miss Pearson asked.
“Then your chlorination system’s not working properly. Needs adjusting, presumably. Then we can try again.”
“Chlorination system,” she said. She was squirming now. Craig had a hard time keeping a straight face.
“Shall we?”
“Okay.” She sighed.
One drop. Two drops. Three drops, and so on.
“There now,” Craig said. “As you can see.…”
“What?”
“Let’s take this out into the light,” he said. He carried the testing kit outside and sat with it on the top step of the ridiculous outbuilding. Miss Pearson sat beside him, too close.
“Looks pretty good,” she said.
The tube on the left was clear, the tube on the right was bright red, and number four, right in the middle, was a lovely amber, the exact color of the test card.
Craig Gordon carried the test kit back into the building and emptied the tubes into the first pool. He put the tubes back in place and snapped the case closed.
“Thank you very much,” he told Miss Pearson. “You pass inspection. Healthy water. That’s what we like to see. What the law requires.”
God damn it all to hell, he thought.
———
In the mid-afternoon of the same Tuesday, Nqong put the Clorox bottle back on the shelf. He had left it to drip all morning into the pipe that fed the Hope Springs baths, just as he had done every Tuesday since the old man had taught him how to tend to the waters. Done working for the day, Nqong left the water house and padded barefoot down the slippery trail to the sulfur stream. He removed the canvas wrap from his body and slipped into the warm pool he had made by damming the stream. Afternoon sun filtered through the trees and dappled the surface of the water. The still forest had a quiet ring, a charge in the air.
As he was about to drift into a state of deep meditation, which was the yellow people’s way of saying a snooze, when he heard the crunch of human footsteps approaching through the forest. It was not a familiar sound here in what Nqong thought of as his private place. He had not had a human visitor since that summer morning, almost a decade ago, when Karen Hope had knocked on the water house door, and
Nqong had momentarily thought she was Liv Pomeroy, coming back to join him or take him away.
This new visitor arrived, and for a moment Nqong thought it was Karen. But this was not Karen, although there was a family resemblance. This woman was older than Karen, grayer and stouter but with the same clear smile. She wore khaki shorts and a khaki shirt and sturdy hiking shoes. She looked fatigued but friendly.
The woman pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her face. She grinned down at him and said, “So there you are, Nqong. I thought I’d find you here. Either here or up to your chin in the mud. You old polliwog.”
It took him a long time to speak, with his head hammering along to the pounding of his heart. When he felt he could speak without croaking, he said, “You said you would come back.” That was the longest, and the only, sentence he could manage for the moment.
She smiled and nodded. “And here I am. It took me long enough, but here I am. Hello, Nqong.”
“Hello, Libby.”
“It’s Liv now,” she said. “Do you mind if I join you? I’ve been traveling for sixteen hours and I could use a good soak.”
Nqong nodded.
Liv Pomeroy sat on a stone and untied her shoes. “It’s been donkey’s years since I’ve had a mineral bath. So, Nqong, how’ve you been keeping yourself? Don’t tell me I’m going to have to teach you to talk again.”
“Get in the water, Libby. I’ll talk to you when I can find my tongue.”
She laughed. “You just want to see me naked. Well, here it is.” She removed her clothes and stepped down into the hot water. “There have been a few changes, as you can see.”
Livingston Pomeroy now had only one breast, and her skin was white, with its share of wrinkles; but she was a strong and handsome woman. She smiled deeply as she sank into the pool. “Now, that’s more like it.” Under the water she reached forward with her right hand and gripped Nqong’s left ankle. “Did they tell you I was coming?”
Hot Springs Eternal Page 17
