The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness

by Rick Bass

  Harry paid for Jack’s meal: he told Wallis he’d have to get his own, being competition and all.

  The two men laughed, going out the door. Wallis finished his tea.

  ***

  There was a pretty girl in town. Her name was Sara. She’d lived in the valley all her life: lived it above the oil. She was twenty, and she wanted to go places. Sara looked at the money truck a long time when it rumbled down the roads, raising dust—the odd young man with the necklace driving it, the old man riding at his side, and in the back, the two hounds they never seemed to pay any attention to—but also, she laughed at it, after it had passed her by. They had already drilled on her land. Harry Reeves’s old puppeteer, Dudley, had drilled on her parents’ land—a German family, the Geohegans were tremendous landholders, owning more than eight thousand acres—and the well had been dry. They drove past her every time now. She went down to see Wallis: everyone knew where he camped. This in the summer. Her hair was soft.

  “How many wells have you drilled?” she asked him. He was sitting on the wing of the plane, looking at his notes. Wallis knew who she was, and where she was from, and about her parents’ well. He was surprised their well had been a dry hole, and he believed, knew, that the rest of the land beneath their lease held oil. He considered the nuances of revenge. He bit into an apple. She boldly handed him a piece of cheese she had brought, like a student having come for a good grade—she held it out as far as she could, for him to take. He accepted it, sliced it with his knife, looked up at her with the sun behind her. He handed her a piece back. He did not have enough money to lease all of the Geohegan’s land. He had found too much oil, this time. He did not know her name, only who she was.

  “Thirteen,” said Wallis. He decided to keep it quiet, about the oil beneath her. To wait until he could afford to drill the whole thing. To sting Dudley. It would be a big well: the biggest in the county, the most the old sea could give.

  “Thirteen?” she said, softly. Her hair was blond, down in a braid. She wore a light blue dress. There were faint freckles on her nose. Thirteen wells did not seem like a lot.

  “I’ve never drilled a dry hole,” Wallis said. It was funny, he thought, for him to say that. It made the apple taste bad.

  He reached into his truck and pulled out a thermos: shared some warm water with her. She brushed her hair back, as if the wind was in it, and watched him. Lamar County, in the state of Alabama. There were bears in her woods. Her parents raised chickens, and had many cattle. It was unbelievable that he had a plane. She didn’t think she’d look at the money truck, not anymore.

  He had mapping to do that day. She stood back and watched him take off, bumping down the long field; when he was hazy in the distance, the plane left the ground. She shielded her eyes. He disappeared over the hill.

  ***

  Dudley, in the warm cockpit, lifted his head and looked at Wallis steadily as the plane flew, gaining altitude. He could tell what was coming.

  When they were far above the earth, Wallis banked the plane and then rose into a steep climbing stall, pointing the plane straight at the sun, as he did every day, at least once: the propeller’s revolutions becoming weaker and softer, more futile, as the engine strained against the pull of the rocks and mountains and rivers below it: the persistent, wavering squall of the stall horn: hard shuddering, and then the plane, five thousand feet up by now, peeled off to the side, unable to go any higher at that steep a pitch. The nose was pulled abruptly down, as if following an anchor tossed from the window, and the plane went into a spinning dive, like a ride at the fair, straight at the ground, which was visible far below in patches through the clouds. Pencils and erasers and dust flew past their ears, the press of force on their bodies. Dudley was strapped in, as always. His long ears hung out at right angles, as if in space.

  When the last clouds were cleared, Wallis pushed the yoke in sharply, about half its length, and pressed one rudder pedal in, to stop the spinning. The plane pulled smoothly out of the dive, and flew flat and straight. Things that were stuck to the ceiling rained back down again. They were going to live. Wallis could do other things with an airplane, too. He did it to stay sharp—so that when there was a thunderhead or wind shear or he got trapped between trees and a power line, too near a radio antenna’s guy wires, he would be able to get out: would have the ability to get out.

  Farmers and others below who saw him, practicing far out over the larger, wooded hills that rolled up, folding, into the Appalachians like waves of forest, said he was witching: that there was a device or machine in the nose of his plane that could smell oil. Whenever he passed over a large stretch of it, it pulled the plane down toward it, into a dive.

  To the country people thereabouts, Wallis was a hero, and risking his life for them. On slow evenings when no other customers were around, he ate free at some of the restaurants. They began to feel badly, sometimes, taking the money from Harry Reeves and Jack: bargaining, dickering. Wishing maybe they could lease to Wallis.

  People waved at Wallis and Dudley when they saw them driving, and yet he remained a mystery, unlike other things in the country. Their lives were simple and straight and filled with the work and the talk about crops and the grocery store, and ever, pleasurably, hatefully, always with emotion, the weather; but he was outside these things.

  “He’s got to be that way,” an old man said, spitting, when they talked about him at the gas station. “He’s looking for the hardest thing to find in the world. Shit, it’s buried: it’s invisible.”

  Heads nodding. They looked up at the sky. He was looking for the invisible thing. He could see things they couldn’t.

  ***

  Another time, in a restaurant: breakfast, the three of them in the same room. Early, foggy. He looked at Jack when Jack turned slightly away from him, checking out, paying the cashier. There was no way on earth Jack could like Harry, or even tolerate him, or the man Dudley either. It was obvious, even to Wallis, who rarely watched people, that Jack was being a fake, a turd, a brown nose, for some later motive. Everyone knew, Wallis thought, that it was better to belong to yourself and have one acre in a drilling well than to belong to another man, even if that man had a hundred, a thousand wells, or the whole county. This had to be common knowledge, a fact of existence, didn’t it? How could one breathe and not know this?

  Jack was looking back at Wallis. Wallis realized this but could not turn away. His mouth was slightly open, even: staring. He looked and looked at Jack, frowning with his eyes, trying to get a handle on it but unable to, trying to see beyond, like the old ocean he could see from the sky... but not this. “Damn,” Jack said, and turned away, shaking his head, and left the restaurant, behind Harry, who was carrying the satchel. Wallis watched him go; he gave them a minute to be gone before leaving himself: woodsmoke, when he stepped outside, and the smell of bacon. He rolled his collar up. It felt good to be alone, and in the crisp air.

  Later that day, flying, coming down through some clouds, he forgot to pull the carburetor heat switch. The plane looked different to him, and the mountains as well. He had to put down in a field, and when he did, the ground felt different, too. His legs were shaky. He called Dudley and they walked a little ways off from the plane and he lay down in the middle of the field in the sun on his back and closed his eyes, and felt wind, sun, the ground below him. He lay with his back to the ground as a wrestler would, pinning it: he thought what a short distance two thousand feet was, and tried to imagine the oil beneath him, straining to get out, but was unable to. The sun confused him, with its warmth, and brightness. He dozed through the rest of the afternoon. His life meant something. He was his own man, belonged to no one: he had never drilled a dry hole, and he had saved a dog from being killed. There was a balance sheet, and as long as one did not go below zero, it seemed a victory: like continuous, enduring victory.

  He was terrified of going below that zero: of belonging to someone else. It seemed that everything bad would follow from that. You would ca
tch emphysema. You would have to wear a chain around your neck. You would have sold yourself, and by the very act of doing it once—though he was sure those who did it told themselves otherwise, that it was only for a little while—you would never, ever be able to buy yourself back. Because there wouldn’t be anything left to buy. Not even if you went a little fraction of an inch below that zero. The sea would move in: the old times would be buried.

  He fed Dudley, scratched his ears, ate apples in the sunlight and in the plane as he flew, and held on for dear life.

  ***

  He and Jack and Harry were somehow yet again in the same restaurant at the same time, even though it was north of town several miles. Bad luck, thought Wallis, the third time in a month, but also he was not much concerned. He had leased twenty-seven acres in section 13 that day, for a tenth of what it usually cost: that was how he’d been able to afford such a large tract of land. The reason he had gotten it so cheaply was that Old Dudley had drilled a well there several years ago, and had thought it dry, and had plugged it. Wallis had never owned twenty-seven acres in a prospect before. He became near-dizzy at the thought of it. And it would be fun, too, to embarrass Old Dudley, to go in and drill a place that Dudley had left, and find oil. The statement would be stark and obvious: Dudley could not find oil on that twenty-seven acres; Wallis could; therefore Wallis was a better geologist.

  He didn’t need to be nice to Dudley. He would try hard to stay away from the very natural feeling of revenge because he knew it was a trap, like going below the zero—he had found so much oil for Old Dudley, when he worked for him, unrewarded—and it would cut Wallis up, and beat him, even if it did sound fun and good—questing for vengeance—but neither did Wallis have to be nice to him. If revenge happened, it happened. It was good. He could belch in Old Dudley’s company if he wished and not excuse himself. He had escaped Old Dudley, and his life mattered.

  The salt and pepper shakers on the tables seemed to have significance and clarity. He watched Jack and Harry muddle along through the buffet: pausing, asking questions of the chef, frowning, rubbing their chins: reaching slowly and hesitantly for this dish and that: pie, beans, chicken—leaning over and reaching as if controlled by strings from above. The air tasted like spring water to Wallis. He got a bowl of oatmeal, a piece of cold melon, and a Coke. He sat at the far end of the restaurant, his back to them—and their backs to his—and ate. The melon was fresh; the oatmeal was hot.

  He left a tip and walked out the door. It was good to be able to just take four steps and be out the door: not having to turn around, look back, or pass by them. He drove out to the field with the windows down and took his sleeping bag out and unrolled it on the ground and got in it.

  The stars were like Christmas. The night was cold. The twenty-seven acres on his lease application in the glove box made his toes want to dance around in the bottom of the sleeping bag. He supposed that he was getting close to revenge and that was different from flying around eating apples and looking for oil, but also there was the wild and primal goodness of the feeling, visceral, of having scored a killing punch. Something about it made him want to do it again, and maybe again and again. He lay awake for a very long time, pleased with himself, and was enormously happy. The stars seemed to encourage him. As if they were on his side.

  ***

  It got much colder. New Year’s Eve saw zero; the next day, twelve below, and windy. Sara and Wallis lay in their bed by the window at the Brown Motel with the lights off and the curtains open. Dudley slept at the foot of the bed: the three of them conspiring to make a beautiful steady breathing. There were stars, more than ever. Wallis held her tightly. They watched the stars for a while, and then she rolled over on top of him and made love to him. She looked at his face the whole time. Blankets covered them; the room was cold. The bed rocked, steadily; Dudley stirred, in his sleep, once. She was imagining that she was atop one of the pumping jacks that went down with the rods and then came back up with a rushing swab of oil. In cold weather the oil sometimes steamed.

  He tried very hard to love her. He felt that it was time for him to be in love. That he needed to be in love.

  After, he closed his eyes and pulled her to him, and she put her head up under his chin. He would find love. And they, he and Sara, would find the Big Well. Somehow he would get the money together to drill it himself—not paying for 1 percent, or 3 percent, but the whole 100 percent, start to middle to finish—he did like that idea—and then he would try. There would be a house in the woods, with Dudley the hound that couldn’t hunt, and they’d have a child, and Wallis would work very hard at loving her the way he thought it should be, the pure way, the way he found oil. If only he could love her the way he looked for oil: it would be perfect. He’d try.

  Around midnight, a fierce, jagged coughing began. The sounds traveled through the cinder blocks from about three rooms down. Wallis listened to the sound of Old Dudley running a young man and an old one down to their deaths. Sara awoke, not knowing where she was, reaching for a lamp.

  “What’s that?”

  “Harry and Jack,” he said.

  “Is there oil on my land?” she said, suddenly. She had his shoulders in her hands: she was over him again. He looked away, at the dark wall, and listened to Harry’s coughs. It sounded as if he were standing upright now, waddle-pacing the room; an old death stagger, Wallis imagined—Jack probably with his head under both pillows. It was very possible that Wallis couldn’t love anyone: could only work, and work. He knew there were people like that.

  “Maybe,” he said, getting up angrily, leaving her grasp and pulling on a pair of underwear: Dudley rising, startled, at his heels, not knowing this routine, but with him. Wallis and Dudley went quickly out the door, and barefooted, shivering violently already from the weather’s strength, Wallis hurried across the gravel, reached Harry’s door, and began kicking it. There wasn’t any moon. The wind carried the thumps of his kicks quickly off. A light came on: Jack’s face through the crack of the door, the chain beneath his chin like the chin strap on a football helmet.

  Wallis put his face in the wedge of light so that he was an inch away from Jack’s startled eyes.

  “Shut that shit up or kill the old man,” he said. Dudley growled and raised his hackles: he stood as big as a wolf.

  “I... I... I’m sorry,” Jack said.

  “It keeps Mrs. Brown awake,” Wallis said. He didn’t say anything else, just stood there. Jack could see the squareness and hardness of his teeth, and the thing that was in the bottom of him, in the bottom, far bottom, of everyone.

  “We’ll... he’ll stop,” Jack said.

  “I’m going to cut his throat out, tonight, if he doesn’t,” Wallis hissed. “I’ll either come through the door or the window. There’ll be blood all over the sheets.”

  He walked hurriedly back to his room, and barely made it before he could walk no farther. Sara cried out loudly when he got in bed; it was as if a block of ice had been slid in with her.

  “Yes there’s oil under your land,” he said. He was shuddering as if seized by a current.

  She came back to him: moved back in closer, held his coolness, tentatively, then all the way: pulled him to her yet again.

  “Oh, baby,” she said, with her eyes shut.

  “Oh, baby,” he repeated: trying it out.

  He was numb. He warmed slowly.

  When he awoke in the morning, he felt thicker, heavier, and later in the day realized it was because he was now carrying two things, anger and revenge. Logic, and having worked for Dudley—having seen everything done the wrong way—told him that the angrier he got at not being able to fall in love with Sara, the less likely it was that it would happen—but he had exploded at Jack and Harry, and now, walking, he felt as if it—anger, and pride—was building up again. He felt as if he were oil, far below the ground, trapped in a thin layer of rock. He felt that when the drilling bit did hit his formation, and pierced the very top of it, he would come out: blowing, all
of it, a fire, a roar. That he would burn down whatever it was that had touched him, and diluted him. Dizzy, he bent down and scratched Dudley’s ears. The day was clear and cold: the light was pretty. He knew that you could only do one thing well: to do it the right and best way. There could be nothing else. His boss was too good at making money, whether off of other people’s woes or not, to be a good geologist. Wallis was too good at what he did, feeling what used to be, to make money. He knew about the old ocean. He could see it, and felt he had lived on it. He had its number.

  He wondered if he could even drill a dry hole: if he could stop wanting to find oil.

  He wondered if she was worth it.

  ***

  She came driving up just as he was climbing in the plane that afternoon—jeans, tennis shoes, a heavy old blue sweater, and a parka: her hair, in the sun. She hugged him, standing under the high wing of the plane to do so. Her face felt cool and smooth, like he imagined love was supposed to. She smelled good, and he wanted her.

  Surely, thought Wallis, if love was not capable for him with this girl, then it could not exist, for him.

  He took her up. He was jittery: flushed, as when he first realized he was tracking oil. (When he actually found it, pinpointed it, mapped, and contained it, he was cool—it was anticlimactic, by that point—but the first scent—the turn of the head, the question—that was the rush.)

  She took her parka off. She took her shirt off. The sun was warm in the cockpit.

  “Show me you’re a very good pilot,” she said, laughing. It happened to everyone: it could happen to anyone. It was the most common thing in the world. She had come out to see him.

  A mile above the earth they made slow, graceful love: he let her hold the yoke and work the pedals some as they flew. It alarmed him, a little, to not be able to see in front of him. It did feel good. He closed his eyes for as long as he dared. When she began to cry out he took the yoke and began to climb slowly into the sun.