On the street, at parties and restaurants: those looks of preoccupied recognition, the brain nag that they had seen her somewhere, but where? (“You look like I know you,” the woodsman had said.) Not altogether terrible, except for the guesses, other lives that might have been, always painfully better than her own—the indie that swept the festivals, the cellist from the new band, this It girl or that. But she was professional wallpaper, her job to replicate a human being without the mess of one, and so they would scowl at her, a problem never to be solved. The woodsman had sometimes looked at her as though she were a tick clinging to a stalk of grass.
(He had another look, too, but she would not quite allow herself to remember it. Something that made his smile go lopsided, a cord bulge in his jaw, a look that meant all the ways and reasons he loved her were at that instant rising in him.)
But at the dune she was regarded in a way she had never been regarded. The girls thought her and Ig cute, and said so, but also seemed a little repelled. The men were harder to decipher. Since girlhood, the gazes of men and boys had been a kind of consumption, gulping her in not because she was beautiful—because with her bad skin and bad teeth she was not beautiful, not without the tricks, “certainly not street pretty,” her agent often barked into her earpiece—but because she was thin and her bones showed in places like a partridge on a plate. But at the dune, instead a glance to her face, then her feet, then to Ig slung around her. Pity? There was some. The story got around, she knew: a wife lost her husband, a widow with a baby. But something beneath the pity. A smile that, she realized in time, meant the child was triggering the saddest memories of their happiest moments. That old man called Jimmer, the heart side of his face purpled wurst, whose left hand moved without him, mumbled either “Mine’s grown” or “Mine’s gone.”
Usually, the men said nothing, giving her a wide psychic berth for reasons she did not understand and would not understand for some time.
No matter. Here, the damsel delivered her greatest role. She played long-suffering, she played pure. A mother.
Only—and her coach had said this would happen, the miraculous transmutation into character, a notion that Luz had always found a little frightening—she wasn’t playing. Another surprise. Here, she was a good woman.
Like a mother, Luz worried.
DALLAS
There’s nothing wrong with the child, nothing wrong on this Earth and surely not here. I believe that. Take her to Jimmer in the teepee if you don’t believe me. He’s our healer.
JIMMER
Was the little one baptized, and if so did she drink of the baptismal water? Did she cry when she was born? She’s not anything-handed—which arm did you first put through the sleeve when you put on her baptismal dress? Don’t worry, doll, no one ever remembers. Did she have much hair when she was born? Children born with too much hair cannot think straight, for the hair tugs on their brain and drains it. On the other hand, children born without any hair are dim, because the hair is still inside the head and it clogs the brain. Did you tickle her much? You mustn’t tickle a child before she speaks, it can cause a stammer or even muteness. Freckles come from drops of rain drying in the sun, though I assume that’s not the case here. Did you and the father speak much the day she was born? What day of the week was that? A Saturday baby will be stupid, but only for a bit, because Saturdays are lazy days. If we scrape the dirt from her nails and put it in her water she may be cured of that petting, but I advise against it. For the insomnia you need to get your jing flowing again. Yes, there’s a blockage above your kidneys. That Holiday Rambler there, with the brassiere flag. The girls live there. At the very least they’re up all night. Sew a salt crystal into your hem, for the heartache.
THE GIRLS
We come from all over. We’re here because we want to be, our contribution. We don’t use money, not in a five-senses form. We’ve never been this good at anything, never particularly good at sex, even. Speak for yourself! The Rambler is not a brothel. Think of it as a bathhouse. Think of it as a sanctuary. Think of it however you like, or not at all. We relax you, we do what comes to us and what comes to you. A haven from inhibitions and negativity. You don’t know how negative thoughts weigh you until you float free of them, then there’s no putting them on again. The Rambler is a medical tent. We knead the worry out of you! There’s no shame here. We embrace after each orgasm. Orgasm is God in the body. Before we got here, we were sensual atheists. Orgasm is a leap of faith. They call it a leap because you have to leave your body. We’re not shackling anyone with our expectations. But we are willing to receive seed when it seeks us. We have to be. There are no divisions here, no lines between the erotic, the sublime and the divine. No space for the worldly. There are clusters of nerves all over the body and each of these can be stimulated to heaven. We can coax an orgasm from the earlobe, the Achilles’ tendon, the tip of your nose. We can come by watching others come. Just sitting is fine. Sit as long as you like. It’s nice to have some company. Relax. Give us your burdens.
JIMMER
For arthritis wear the eyetooth of a pig. Chew newspaper to stop a nosebleed. A salt mackerel tied to the feet cures bunions. Cut off a head cold by tying a long stocking around your neck. Rub warts with pebbles, rub warts with chicken blood, rub warts with a slice of raw potato and stow it in the eaves, rub warts with thistle leaves and throw them into a grave, scratch a wart with a nail from a coffin until it bleeds. In the Army I carried the Ninety-First Psalm in my pocket and the bullets never touched me. Do not wear a man’s hat unless you intend to keep him. Did you whistle when you carried her? Pardon my French, but this will retard surefire. In what direction did you sleep while expecting? Feet to the north could tie the child’s tongue. Have you taken the short end of a wishbone lately? Bad things come in threes, miracles in pairs. Never point at lightning. If you kiss a man with the raw heart of a turtledove in your mouth he will fall in love with you and never out. The first to go to sleep after consummation will be the first to die. If a body of a drowned person cannot be found, toss a loaf of bread in after it. The loaf will hover above it. Some of this is not so useful these days.
THE GIRLS
It’s arsenic poisoning, Jimmer’s face. Have you never seen a case? You’d think he’d be more grateful, ugly as he is. Though that twitchy hand can do some tricks between your legs. Can it? Ig is not what you would call cute, is she? Cute is the worst way to be. Cute is an act of erasure. Cute is gynophobia writ large. We all have a snake or two in our hair. Even you. Especially you.
DALLAS
The girls were lost before they came here. Wanderers, like all of us. They have a very specific definition of ministry, let’s say. But who am I to tell another woman what counts as divination? For that matter, who are you?
JIMMER
Dallas has an ardent soul. Very awake. One of the few who truly grasp the mystery of the dune sea.
DALLAS
At the dune sea two cartographers can walk the same trail and draw different maps.
JIMMER
Two artists can sit side by side, sketching the same peaks, sharing the same tin of charcoal, and their drawings will emerge as though they were sketching two different ranges on two different continents.
DALLAS
That sound you hear at night, the singing, it’s a vibration. You’re hearing the dune move through you.
THE GIRLS
The food comes from the greenhouses. You’ve seen the Volkswagens? Rolled over a VW mechanic and gutted them for grow pods. Tomatoes, kale, strawberries. You’ve met Cody? Our grower savant?
CODY
Here you’ve got your snow peas, your watermelon, over there your cantaloupe, your leafy greens. Everything organic, everything heirloom. No tubers, no winter squash, no rice or wheat or trees, of course. Before this I was an urchin, you could say. I’d never belonged to anything. When the Amargosa rolled over my school it was the
first time I was capable of considering the existence of a benevolent God. The Wide Rock School for Errant Boys. Basically a labor camp. One of those places where they use wilderness as a cage and see no irony in it. Blueberries? Sure. I think I can manage blueberries.
JIMMER
The dune sea does not exist, insomuch as we define existence. How is that little one? Put a nub of brute root under her pillow.
CODY
The root is Levi’s creation, I can’t take credit for it. Basically he spliced cannabis with cocoa. There’s some peyote in there too, or a cousin of it. No paranoia though, no freakery. A truly flawless hybrid. Inspired. Genius. Chew the root to clear your mind. Levi takes them on vision quests.
THE GIRLS
They go at night, while we sleep. Levi needs peace to dowse. He and Nico take the empty kegs and fill them at the ephemeral rivers. They distribute the full kegs at bonfire. He dowses with his hands, rather than a rod. The phallus would defile the process. Men have wagged their rods at the Earth plenty.
JIMMER
The kids call them vision quests. I call it listening. He uses his hands because he can’t find branches. When was the last time you saw a tree?
DALLAS
For Levi, using a tree branch to find a river would be like using a severed arm to find a shallow grave.
JIMMER
A gifted dowser can divine with anything for anything, so long as his desire is honest. He can dowse for oil or ore. He can tell whether something is safe to eat or drink. He can find lost objects or missing people. He can solve crimes. He can find anything buried: unmarked graves, mineral deposits, long-healed injuries, subconscious fantasies. He can feel sickness, he can feel lies. Intuition enters the mind in a way Western science has yet to explain. Moses was a dowser, probably Jesus too. Though they did not have the benefit of dune buggies.
CODY
Oh, no. We’d be fucked if we were still on gas. Nico rigged the buggies with solar and wind. Like sailing on land. He’s a genius with machinery. Don’t I know you from somewhere?
THE GIRLS
Nico was Tesla in another life. He was Tesla and he was Vlad the Impaler. You’ve got one of those déjà vu faces.
DALLAS
Nico is a savage. That’s his Chieftain there. Leave him be.
JIMMER
If you open your eyes to the sun at dawn and dusk, when its energy is purest, you will absorb all the day’s nutrients via the ocular ducts. It’s a mainline to the brain, nutrients converted directly to brainpower. Einstein did this. Bach, too. Picasso’s Paris studio faced east and he would stare out the window for an hour each morning to invigorate himself. He painted Guernica in three weeks.
So Luz began her sungazing, began pacing up and down the Blue Bird with Ig and letting the child pull a dusty blanket aside and ask, “What is?”
“Sunrise,” Luz said, staring. She wanted a better brain, wanted to make beguiling, impressive things, or at least to need less. She drank up the morning rays until her eyes stung, keeping Ig in shadow. So far she had not felt much resembling rejuvenation or genius. The only tangible effects of her sungazing shone when she closed her eyes and the sun remained there, both darkness and light. Then one day, pointed somethings beneath it too.
She opened her eyes and looked not at the sun, rising, but at the structures on the horizon below. A mirage, surely, but a queer one: dollhouse silhouettes, gingerbread houses all in a tidy row. She squinted harder against the sun, thinking she was maybe cracked up after all. NORTH POLE OUTLETS, a sign reassured her.
“Dal,” she said. “I think I found something.”
—
The colony swarmed, darted across the asphalt lanes, between the planters and decorative lampposts, beneath eaves dolloped with plaster snow, to shops with brown paper taped over their windows, chains across their glass doors. Luz went too, with a wet shroud over Ig to keep the heat away. Luz had spent a lot of time in malls, as a preteen and after. It was where the suave young handlers from the agency always took them when they traveled, if they had any downtime. She strolled the outlets as she might have were it not abandoned, Ig swaying in her sling.
Meanwhile, the others lifted forest-green trash cans and chucked them through the store windows, sending glass down like rain, making Ig clap. Through one such waterfall came Nico with left-behind batteries, phones, cameras, laptops, wires and plugs—contraptions Luz had not seen for a long time and had not missed. In another shop Dallas filled a duffel with puffy plastic packages of linens. From another shattered window Cody emerged cackling, with shoes on his hands.
“What size are you?” he called to Luz.
She could not remember, had to check the bottom of the starlet’s sandals.
Cody came back with boxes stacked big to little, a cardboard wedding cake. He gave Luz a pair of sensible mom tennies with yellowed gum soles, pink Velcro light-ups in every baby size for Ig. Though it was too bright out to see whether the light-up cells were dead, Ig liked Cody, perhaps saw that he needed her enthusiasm, and faked some.
Newly shod, Luz and Ig went exploring. The baby walked and walked. In one courtyard cul-de-sac they found Santa’s Village, maze of plastic presents, one nutcracker sentinel toppled. Ig was uninterested. They went on.
“What is?”
Luz followed Ig’s gaze to a carousel, its bulbs surely dead but its mirrors and gold trimmings gleaming. Luz lifted Ig over the wrought-iron fence and climbed after. They walked among a pearly menagerie: no horses but pairs of unicorns and zebras, two-humped camels, dignified giraffes. Luz said all their names, though Ig could not or would not repeat any:
“White tigers, Ig!”
“Look, jackrabbits!”
“Cheetahs!”
“Ostriches!” long-legged and confident.
“Eagles!” with wings splayed.
“Dragons!” tongues and tails forked.
“Dolphins!” sleek, lunging muscular through the air.
“Mermaids!” with iridescent tails.
All ahover on candy cane poles, waiting. A wide swan bench for lovers.
Ig stroked and inspected, and gradually the others joined them to marvel at the carousel. When Levi came he told everyone to hop on. Luz perched Ig in the saddle of a fat panda, cinched the dirt-crusted straps around the child’s tiny torso, and climbed on behind her. When everyone was on, Levi, Nico and a boy named Lyle from Cody’s school pushed. Jimmer helped with his good hand. It seemed impossible the wheel would ever turn, but it soon yielded, its insides groaning, the opalescent animals lurching up on their poles then gliding down, coaxing synchronized squeals from their passengers. Above those squeals came music, a warbled underwater tune from somewhere deep within the contraption. As they whirled, a breeze came to the riders, cool and awakening, bringing them lost sensations and forgotten memories.
A girl named Fern remembered her brothers’ launching her from a trampoline.
A girl named Cass remembered clinging to an indifferent beau on the back of his dirt bike.
Luz remembered luging down Canyon Drive on Ray’s longboard, his impossible laugh in her ear.
Cody remembered flinging himself down a ridge beyond Wide Rock, the once he tried to escape.
Dallas remembered floating on her back in the last warm dregs of the Yuba River.
Jimmer remembered his boy.
They laughed anyway.
In the gilt-framed mirror overhead, Luz watched Ig: startled but brave, then cautiously merry, clenching her mama and Mama clenching back. Luz wanted to feel this way forever.
Up ahead, Jimmer swung himself around the pole he’d been pushing and hopped on. Cody and Lyle soon did the same. Levi pushed and pushed, sweating, laughing, hollering for everyone to hold on. He finally jumped on too, shouting whee, and Ig said whee too. Luz wondered if he’d heard her, wanted to catch his eye and mou
th thank you, but soon the carousel was succumbing to its old inertia, the tune above stretched slow and sorrowful.
After, Cody kept congratulating Luz.
“For what?” she said finally.
“You found this,” he said.
“The carousel?”
“The whole damn place!” said Cody, admiring his new loafers.
“Amazing eyes,” said Dallas, still aglow from the ride.
“Beautiful work, Luz,” confirmed Levi, watching Nico inventory his devices.
“You would have found it without me,” she said. “Anyone would have.”
“Not true,” said Dallas. “Things aren’t so reliable out here. The dune could take this place by sundown.”
“And we were out scouting last night,” said Levi. “Didn’t see it, didn’t hear it. This is a gift for the very attuned. Unequivocally so.”
In this way word of Luz’s offering spread through the giddy colony assembled in the shade of the carousel, assessing their haul. Many posited that Luz possessed such qualities as knack and grit and presence of mind. Luz watched Ig do bobbleheaded, bow-legged laps around the carousel in her light-ups and considered the possibility that she did. It was the first time she had ever been a good omen.
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