by Ruth Ozeki
“Room service? At the Falls Motel . . . ?”
But he’d hung up already and was at the door, and she was standing in front of him, and everything else dropped away. Her body was torqued at an awkward angle he remembered from an empty classroom at dusk—one leg forward, the other back, as though she were getting ready to shift her weight and run as fast as she could in the opposite direction. He reached out and took her elbow before she could dart away.
“You came.”
She resisted, leaned against the doorjamb. “I almost didn’t.” She fidgeted with the zipper on her jacket, shifting from one foot to the other. “I mean, what’s the point?”
“Does there have to be a point?”
She thought about it. “I guess not. There never was.”
“No? Wasn’t the point just that we liked each other and wanted to be together? Isn’t that the point now?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“Sure,” he said, but his answer sounded lame. She was watching him closely, and he felt as though she were looking for something that she wanted, that she had misplaced perhaps, that had been hers to begin with and now she needed back. But then she seemed to give up.
“I hate motel rooms,” she said. “Let’s go for a drive. I’ll show you the ruts.”
They took her Pontiac, and she headed west to Massacre Rocks. The late-afternoon sun hung low in the sky. Here and there he could see tractors out in the large field blocks, looking like tiny toys stirring up huge contrails of light-drenched dust. They pulled into the highway rest area and got out of the car. She led him a short distance into the dried weeds and the roadside litter and pointed to the ground.
“There.”
At his feet, in the pale, compacted earth, were several deep, parallel indentations. “What are they?”
“You don’t know? You’re the history teacher. They’re wagon-wheel ruts. From the Oregon Trail.”
“Oh.” What else could he say? They were far from prepossessing.
“I thought you’d like them,” she said. “But I guess you’re not interested in history anymore. Come on. Let’s walk to the river.”
They scrambled down through the boulders. She pointed out the land-forms: Massacre Rocks, Devil’s Gate, Gate of Death.
“Great place for an ambush,” Elliot said, looking up at the rocks.
Here and there, traces of the ruts were still visible. Volcanic evidence abounded. Devil’s Gate Pass was an extinct crater, she told him. The huge boulders surrounding them had been rolled and polished by a prehistoric flood, which had covered the entire landscape. The second largest in the geologic history of the world.
“What was the largest?”
She shrugged. “Noah’s, I suppose.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I guess my father taught me.”
“My father never taught me anything,” Elliot said.
The river itself was shrunken and disappointing. They walked around the edges of the mud flats, then climbed back up and sat on the boulders, looking down the valley. She took a pint of whiskey from the pocket of her jacket and drank from it, then passed it to him. She lit a cigarette and exhaled.
“Tell me about your father,” she said.
“He ran out on my mom when I was just a kid. He was a salesman. Office furnishings, water coolers, stuff like that. He was a real womanizer—God, that word sounds dated. Do people even use it now?”
“Nowadays I think we just say slut.”
“For a man, too?”
“Why not?”
“My dad was a lousy role model,” he said sadly. “He’s probably the reason I never settled down.”
“Fear of commitment?”
“I don’t trust myself not to hurt people.”
She nodded, extinguishing the cigarette under her heel. “Elliot?”
He took another drink and braced himself. When women used his name like that, launching it into the air and leaving it dangling, it usually meant trouble. “Yes?”
“Did you miss me?”
“Sure,” he said. He had to laugh. “I thought about you all night.”
She shook her head impatiently. “No. I mean back then. After I left. Did you ever wonder about me, or worry, or think about coming to find me?”
“I didn’t even know you’d gone.” This was tricky. It was old history, and what she’d said was true. He wasn’t all that interested anymore. “It’s not like anyone was telling me much about you,” he said. “And I left Liberty Falls myself soon after.”
“Oh.” She played with her shoelaces. “Nobody came. Not you, not Lloyd . . .”
“Is that why you ran away? So someone would come after you?”
“Not really. I just had to get out of here.”
“And now you’re back.”
“Yeah . . .” She looked out over the vast river valley and brushed the hair away from her temples. He watched her profile, silhouetted against the rocks and outlined sharply in gold by the setting sun.
“You look like an Indian princess,” he said.
She looked startled, and then she laughed. “I can’t believe you’re saying that. You were so offended that I used to play the Indian princess when there were Shoshone kids in the class. Called it revisionist history, do you remember?”
“No,” he said. “That was back in the old days. When I was naïve enough to think that history mattered.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Not on this earth.”
“What happened to you?”
He laughed and held his hand out for the bottle. “Here, you better give me some more of that.” He took a long swig, and she watched him.
“I’m serious,” she said. “You were a good teacher. Different. You really made us think about things. What happened?”
“I never wanted to teach. I just stayed on in school for the deferment. After I left here I went to D.C. and worked as a reporter. It was post-Watergate, and I wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein, with contacts inside the government and Deep Throat and all that.”
“And were you?”
“It was different than I thought. Like I said, I was naïve.”
“Why do you say history doesn’t matter?”
“Because it doesn’t exist. Not in the way your history teacher taught you it does. What you think of as history is just someone’s spin of a set of events. It’s only a matter of who’s more skillful at getting his version on the public record.”
“But you’re still a reporter?”
“Sort of.”
“How can you be sort of a reporter?”
“I write stories. Most reporters approach history retroactively. My approach is more preemptive.”
“Oh,” she said, but he sensed that she wasn’t really listening anymore. The sun was just slipping over the horizon, turning the sky pink and taking the last warmth with it. She looked very small and cold sitting on the rock. He put his arm around her and rubbed her arm.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Teach a few English classes. Raise kids. Sell a little real estate on the side.” She drank back the last of the whiskey. “Funny I should have become the teacher, huh?” She stood up, and, teetering slightly on the edge of the rock, she drew back her arm and hurled the empty bottle into the rocky gorge, toward the river. They waited for the high sound of glass breaking, but it never came.
“You know what I like?” she said, looking out over the rimrock to the endless plains. “I like the feeling that this is just the thinnest of crusts, covering the earth.”
She linked her arm through his in a friendly way. “In Hawaii, near where I live, there’s a place where you can walk right out onto an active lava flow. You’re not supposed to, but you can. It’s flowing right down from a volcano, and the crust is so hot you can feel it burning through the rubber of your soles. If you go at night and look down, you can see cracks in the black crust and the red-hot molten lava flowing underneath, just inches from y
our feet. And you know that if you take a wrong step where the crust is too thin, your foot will go right through and that’ll be the end of it. Burn your foot to a crisp, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “A charred stump. That’s all you’d be left with. Maybe I’ll take you there sometime.”
She turned to him and wrapped her arms around his neck and let her weight lean into him. She lifted her face for a kiss, and her mouth tasted like whiskey and cigarettes and fresh air. She pulled away and handed him the car keys.
“I think I’m drunk,” she said. “You better drive.”
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the motel.” She broke away and clambered up the rock, then turned to look down at him. “Better hurry. I don’t have much time.”
They made love, and it was wordless. He lay on the bed with his arms stretched over his head and his wrists crossed as though bound. He watched her unbutton his shirt and pull it back from his chest, realizing that by not reaching, not touching, he was turning her on, and that to make a move in her direction was to break the flow of her concentration. Her black hair fell forward, curtaining off the ugly room. She watched him, steadily, even as she dipped down to caress him until he felt he couldn’t stand the scrutiny, and he closed his eyes, but still he felt her gaze. Not accusing. Just looking for something. And when he opened his eyes again later on, he felt the sudden conviction that at one point he had possessed it—this thing she was looking for—he’d had it, and squandered it, and now he couldn’t give it back.
But he could try. That’s what he vowed after they were done and she lay resting beside him. He could try to take care. Try not to take too much more from her. This was not a thought he was used to having after sex. He’d made similar resolutions once a relationship had grown tiresome, and he’d wanted out, but not right at the beginning, when things were still so full of promise. She stirred, and he ran his finger down the side of her jaw.
“Hi,” he said.
Of course it wasn’t really the beginning at all. They’d played out one part already, and this was act two, the curtain had just swung open, and he’d stumbled into the center of the stage. He stood there, full of brave intentions.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
She caught his finger in her hand, then curled onto her side, and he could see the worry gather in her face. He felt a fierce sense of caring. Where did this come from? He placed his forefinger between her eyebrows and held it there until the furrow eased under his touch and her eyelids closed. Having failed to do so once before, this time he was determined to protect her. She drew his fingertip against her lips as though it might stop her from speaking, but it didn’t.
“Did you finish your research? Will you come back?”
His heart sank. “I want to.” A nonanswer. “Yes, I’ll try.” That was better, but still . . . She released his finger. He felt her drifting. Then he had an idea.
“Listen,” he said, rolling over. “Tell me about those kids hanging out at your place. The Seeds of Resistance.”
She gave him a strange look. “How’d you know about them?”
He thought quickly. “I overheard some people talking. At Gringo’s.”
She nodded. “People around here are always talking. It’s hell.”
“So who are they?” he asked. “What do they do?”
She shrugged. “They just showed up one day. They drive around and stage demonstrations against genetic engineering. I don’t know much about it. Why?”
“I think I’ve heard about them. They were protesting in Pocatello last week.”
“Last week?” She sounded surprised.
“At a potato growers’ convention. I was covering it as part of my research.” He sat up and rubbed his hands together. “You know, I may have figured out a way of getting back here. This story I’m doing is about the American farming crisis, but maybe I could do a side piece on these kids. Follow them around a little, cover their protests. Genetic engineering is a hot issue. You think they’d be into it?”
It was brilliant. With a legitimate inside contact to a known activist group, he could justify another trip to Duncan, and she could keep tabs on them in the meantime. So many birds with one stone. But she seemed less enthusiastic.
“They’d be into anything to help their cause.”
“Great. Do you know if they’re planning anything? Another protest or . . .”
“They’d better not be,” she said grimly. “That was the deal. They’re here to learn about my parents’ seed business, and in exchange they help out. I really depend on them.” She looked upset. “Are you sure it was them in Pocatello?”
“Well, no,” he said. “It could have been some other group of radical environmental activists.” How had this happened? He hadn’t meant to upset her. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. He thought about the Pinkerton and felt a major twinge of guilt. He reached for her hands and changed the subject. “I just want to come back here as soon as I can.” His voice sounded wistful and kind of lame.
She looked at him, startled, then laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You don’t mean that,” she said.
“Why?”
“You can’t. Nobody wants to come back to Liberty Falls.”
Relieved, he took a deep breath. “It’s not about Liberty Falls. It’s about you.”
He watched her face cloud over with doubt. “Yummy, I’m not going to apologize again for what happened between us, because it isn’t over yet. I’ve never forgotten you.” It felt like the truth. “I don’t want to lose you this time.”
He watched the frown gather once more in that wide-open space between her brows, but this time he didn’t touch it or try to smooth it out. He couldn’t protect her from himself, he realized, without giving her up entirely, and although he wasn’t sure, he suspected that might have been his big mistake in the first place.
The following day, on the flight out of Pocatello, he watched the relentless geometries of the agricultural landscape recede below. It was beautiful, in a bleak, flattened sort of way. The farmers had been worried about the winds, but that didn’t concern him. Weather was an act of God, whose crisis management was outside his jurisdiction. He pulled out his laptop. The report on the Promotions Council was easy, but the rest of the week was looking pretty thin. He wrote up a brief history of the Seeds of Resistance and described the in-depth interrogations of their landlady that took place at the Falls Motel, noting that Ms. Fuller had agreed to supply intelligence regarding the Seeds’ movements and activities. He read over the report. It sounded okay, but he realized he was going to have to come up with something better if he wanted to get back to Idaho anytime soon.
hoormunger
The letter came in the mail a few weeks after Elliot left. It was addressed in crude, childish block letters to THE FULLERS, with no return address. Ocean opened it. She had collected the mail from the box and had asked permission first. Of course I said yes. I thought it was from one of her school friends. I was washing dishes at the sink when she asked,
“What’s a hoormunger?”
“What?”
She sounded it out. “That’s what it says. Har-lits and hoor-mungers.”
Phoenix was looking for milk in the refrigerator. He closed the door and snatched the letter away from her.
“Phoenix, give me that!” I said, grabbing for it with soapy hands, but he twisted away, and, keeping just out of reach, he continued to read. His ears turned dark red. He looked up. There was such hate in his eyes.
“It’s for you.” He thrust the letter at me, pushing roughly past as he headed out the door. His feet clattered down the porch steps.
I read the letter. Harlots and Whoremongers, Thus saith the Lord God . . .
“Let me see it!” Ocean whined. “I want to read it, too.”
I ripped it in half and then in half again.
“I wasn’t finished!”
“You don’t need to see it
. It’s filth.” Because thy filthiness was poured out and thy nakedness discovered. . . .
She was furious. She jumped up and down, stamped her feet, then tore out of the house after Phoenix. Poor Ocean. She hated being left out of anything.
There were pockets of air where I thought there had been earth. There were vacuums and sudden inversions. I threw the letter in the garbage, then sat down at the kitchen table. My hands were shaking and felt unclean. I got up to wash them, holding them under the scalding water until the skin turned red and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I poured a shot of whiskey to keep from being sick, then fished the bits of letter out of the garbage and went after the kids. Geek, I thought. I shall bring up a company against thee. . . .
I cut across the garden to the greenhouse. He was inside working on transplants, but he stopped as soon as I came in.
“Where’s Phoenix?”
Geek shook his head. “Not here.” He watched me as I scanned the greenhouse, looking into the corners. “No one’s here, Yumi. What’s wrong?”
I walked over to the potting table and laid out the pieces of the letter on the gritty surface. Geek scanned it quickly.
“The kids read it,” I said. “They’re freaked out. So am I. ‘Stone thee with stones? Thrust thee through with swords? Burn thine houses with fire?’ It’s horrible. Who would send something like this?”
“What makes you think it’s directed at you?”
“ ‘And I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot. . . .’ Who else could it be?”
“Could be someone else. Or no one . . .”
“Phoenix didn’t think so. He handed it right to me.” My voice tightened. “He’s furious. I thought he’d calm down after Elliot left, but this letter just set him off again. Maybe it’s someone from Lloyd’s church. Someone who knew . . .”
Geek brushed the flecks of dirt from his hands. “What’s with you and this guy Elliot?”
“He’s an old friend. I knew him when I was a kid. He’s a reporter.”
“An old boyfriend?”
He’d been standoffish ever since Elliot showed up and I’d stopped hanging out in the greenhouse. I hadn’t told him much, but now I sensed he knew more than he was letting on. “Phoenix said something, right?”
