Hieroglyph

by Ed Finn

  “Yes, but there’s also the issue, I told him that, I told him just because you work for Texas O&G, try to have an open mind for fuck’s sake—I told him, think about switching to green energy. Fracking for oil and gas just means putting off what we need to do. Like, you know, you need to fucking quit, not go from cocaine to . . . to meth!”

  Rob wouldn’t approve of the f-word either. Dorothy told herself to stop thinking about Rob. Rob used the f-word as much as he liked, but he couldn’t stand women swearing. Generally, he said that meant that either they were common, or they needed a good lay. Shut up about Rob, she told herself.

  “Well, Mrs. Cartwright?”

  She cleared her throat. What had they been talking about?

  “I don’t know,” she said. What could she do? Her life behind her . . . she felt a sudden wave of utter misery.

  “What can I do? I’m not trained . . .”

  “Dorothy, you don’t need training for this,” Rita said, in her proselytizing voice. Rita was a You-nitarian, You-niversalist, as Eva had once said in mincing tones—Rita, there’s so much You in UU, where’s the room for God? They’d had quite a spat about it, but they stayed friends. Rob had always said you could only be friends with people who thought like you.

  “Honey, there are retired people all over the country like you and me who care about the world we are leaving our grandchildren—”

  “—hell, everyone thinks we are old fogies, useless relics, and I say we are a totally untapped resource, a revolution waiting to happen . . .”

  Lawrence (“not Larry”) nodded. “We have experience, and knowledge of human nature—Dorothy, just by being who you are you can make a difference—”

  She found herself signing up to recruit five people and be at the meeting place today in three hours. Janna Helmholtz had called to say the earthmovers were going to be on her property ripping up the trees her granddaddy had planted and she needed them to be there. Three hours! (Well, the fracking company doesn’t wait at our convenience, honey; besides imagine if you were in the middle of the workday, you wouldn’t be able to make it. But we have the time and the determination! So be there or be a quadrilateral! This from Eva, retired math teacher at Pine Tree Elementary.)

  After they had all left, Dorothy found herself putting the dirty dishes by the sink in a mood of despair. How was she going to go to wing 5 and recruit five people? She couldn’t imagine being able to convince anyone. Talking to people was difficult anyway, especially when they didn’t wear their hearing aids or were taking a nap. She heard Rob’s voice: You’re being a fool, Dottie. We Cartwrights don’t get into other people’s business. Do you really think you can make a difference?

  It was hard to remember that she had been second valedictorian at her school, and that she had got into a prestigious college and been on a debating team. After she met Rob—he’d chased and flattered her relentlessly—she had seen the possibility of another life, the kind that she’d only glimpsed through the iron lattice gates of rich acquaintances—a life of going to theater and art museums and raising children to send off to the best schools. Who in the world would love her like Rob? She remembered when they were both young, and he had lost his first job, how much he’d looked up to her, needed her. She began to scrub the baking tray, thinking of Rob’s love for her cooking. He’d always praised her culinary skills to his business friends whenever there was a party. She sighed. He would not have been pleased about her involvement with this cause. But she’d given her word—what had made her agree to talk to five strangers? She wiped her sudsy hands absently on the towel, and her wristlet beeped. “I’m no use to anyone,” she said aloud. “I don’t know what to do.” And she heard a voice from the little computer on the mantelpiece say, with the utmost conviction: “Something good will happen to you today.” Very clear English, but a strange accent. She went and picked up the computer but the screen had gone dark.

  She rearranged her hair and put on fresh lipstick and went determinedly down the hall to wing 5. There were several people in the lounge. She told herself second valedictorian and made herself smile and say hello. By the end of an hour she had recruited eight people. Would have been nine, if Molly hadn’t had her annual physical that afternoon. Damn, you’re good, Rita said, when she called and told her, and Dorothy thought, with pleased surprise, Yes.

  In an hour they were loading into cars, driving over the long, empty roads soon to be filled with rush-hour traffic, over to Janna’s place. Janna had a big house on a hundred acres, and there was already a crowd in the middle of a field, and at least half a dozen cars, and my goodness, was that a TV truck? There was Janna, with a new perm and her big smile, waving to the newcomers walking over to her. The sun was hot. Along one side of the field ran a dark line of woodlands, presumably the place where the pipeline was going through. Dorothy walked over determinedly, ignoring the odd breathlessness that caught her at moments, gritting her teeth, closing her ears against Rob’s voice. That woman should never wear shorts, her legs are too fat, and that one, dressed like a slut, tells you what she wants. These wannabe hippies are a laugh. Can barely walk and they want to change the world! Well, that bit was true of some of the protesters, old ladies with walkers and even a man in a wheelchair. There was Rita, high-fiving him. Dorothy found herself standing at the edge of the crowd, grateful for her hat. There were the earthmovers roaring up in front of them. A young man at the helm of each, one of them grinning, the other one nervous. The sun glinted off the windshields.

  A black woman was making a speech. Eva nudged Dorothy and whispered, “Myra Jackson, professor over at the university.”

  “It’s not just about land,” the woman said. “Global warming is real, and we have to do something about it now, not tomorrow. Shale gas only puts off what we really need, which is green energy, and a new alternative-energy-based economy. Germany’s already ahead of us in solar energy. We need a Marshall Plan for the ecological-economic crisis!”

  There were cheers.

  Now they could hear police sirens getting louder. The protesters began to shout slogans. Dorothy’s heart began to beat thunderously in her ears. What had she gotten herself into?

  There was Janna, yelling above the noise.

  “Y’all pack up your equipment and get outta here, we’re not gonna let you clear my family’s woods! No more fracking!”

  There were signs now going up, and cameras flashing, and people yelling “Don’t frack Texas!,” and the big yellow machines kept coming, although slowly. The professor woman jumped off the table—she was too young and fit to be one of the oldies—and someone moved the table away. The cops arrived, waving the protesters to the side so that the machinery could get to the trees. The crowd shifted and surged, without backing away. The man in the wheelchair waved his stick at a policeman and yelled something. Handcuffs clicked, cameras rolled. The giant machines kept inching forward. Dorothy found herself ignored by everyone, even the cops. She felt the cool air of the woods at her back, through her thin cotton dress. She was just in front of one of the machines. She stared at the young man in the driver’s seat. He looked like Kevin. She wondered why his face was set—goodness, the boy was nervous! She thought of him suddenly as a sacrifice, like all the young men in her life, her son gone to the army, returned a silent shadow of his former self, her grandson beset by demons, all that youth and strength turned wrong. She thought of the poor woman out in the bottom of the ocean in the Arctic trying to save the world so that her grandchild, Dorothy’s grandchild, and all, everyone’s grandchild could live in the world. And she thought how cruel the world that makes young men hold the guns against their own temples, the knives at their own throats, so that their own hands poison the earth and its creatures that the good Lord made—and Rob said in her mind, Dottie, you’re talking like a fool—and something broke inside her.

  She was standing with a Tupperware box of cupcakes—stupidly, she waved it in front of the boy like an offering. She walked toward him, her own face
set, as though she could save him, as though she, Dorothy Cartwright, B.A., M.R.S., could do anything. The kid’s eyes went wide, and he waved frantically at her, and she turned around and saw the great yellow arm of the other machine swing, and the horrified face of the other man, who saw her only at the last minute—then it hit her shoulder, and the side of her head, and then she was falling, and cupcakes falling everywhere.

  She awoke in the hospital. The light was too bright. Someone drew the curtains across the window. She could hear some kind of hubbub outside her door. She slept.

  Hours later she woke feeling better. A lantern-jawed doctor who looked like a very tired Clint Eastwood told her she had a mild concussion, and a cracked bone in her shoulder. The man at the bulldozer had turned the thing off just in time; it was the momentum that had gotten her. Otherwise she might be dead. She was really lucky. All the scans were clear, but they were going to keep her overnight for observation. After that, six weeks of rest for her shoulder.

  “I can see you’re a wild young rebel, Mrs. Cartwright, but promise me you won’t be up to those shenanigans for a while,” he said, smiling.

  She told him, smiling back, surprising herself, “You do your job, I’ll do mine.”

  Her son called. Matt was driving over the next day. He sounded more bemused than anything. She thought with satisfaction that she had finally managed to surprise someone.

  And then Molly was there, praising her like she had done something heroic.

  “Wish I could have been there,” she said wistfully. “Rita and Eva are in jail, and that black professor too, and about ten other people. They’re probably going to charge you as soon as you are well.”

  Dorothy couldn’t imagine going to jail—but Molly made it sound like it was the thing to do. Well, it had been some day. She decided not to worry. Over the doctor’s objections she let two journalists interview her and take pictures. Her mother used to call her a chatterbox, a trait that had disappeared with time and Rob, and now she couldn’t stop talking.

  “When my husband was still alive,” she said, “he used to tell me how impractical it was to worry about the environment. Practical people run the economy, make sure things work. That attitude, combined with greed, has ruined the earth to a degree that threatens our grandchildren. I’m only a housewife, but I know that we need good, fresh air to breathe, and trees to grow, and we need the wild things around us. As a grandmother, I can’t think of one single grandparent who wouldn’t want to do the best for their grandchildren. That’s why I believe we need to protect what the good Lord gave us, this blessed Earth, else how can we live? And what’s more practical than that?”

  After they had all gone, in the silence of the room, she lay back against the pillows, spent. An incredulity rose in her. What had she done? The whole day she had been putting herself forward, Rob would say. The elation subsided. She hid her face in the pillows.

  Then the phone rang. This time it was Kevin.

  “Gramma! I saw you on TV! You kicked ass!”

  She laughed. It was so very nice of him to call. They talked for half an hour, until the nurse came and frowned at her.

  “Gramma, I’m going to get clean this time,” Kevin said. Dorothy took a deep breath.

  “Kev, soon as they let me out of here I’m going to come see you. This time you will get clean, love. You’ve got a life to live.”

  And so do I, she thought after she hung up.

  Lying back in the darkened room, she saw from the digital clock on the side table that it was nearly midnight on March 16. Heavens, no wonder Rob had been haunting her all day—it was his birthday! And she had forgotten. Well, at least she had baked his favorite cupcakes. She thought about how her life had changed in one day, and the work left to be done. It wasn’t going to be easy, and she had no illusions that she was any kind of heroine, or that her few minutes of fame were going to lead to any major changes. But Molly had told her that the phone lines of No Fracking Texas were swamped with calls from other assisted-living facilities and retired people’s associations. It seemed the old ones, the forgotten ones, were coming out of the woodwork. In times gone by, the old were the ones to whom the young turned for advice. Now the old had to bear responsibility for ruining the earth, but they also, by the same logic, bore the responsibility for setting things right. The press was calling it the Suspender Revolution. The Retirees Spring. Kind of disrespectful, but they’d show them. And she, Dorothy Cartwright, had helped it come about. Viva la revolución, and poor Rob, rest in peace, and Happy Birthday.

  THE END

  The Story Begins

  Or does it end here?

  It ends, the young man thinks, as he climbs the last mountain, emerging into the last alpine valley. It ends with his own life winding down as he climbs to the roof of the world. The strength that has allowed him to leave the busy streets of Shanghai and journey to this remote place in the Himalayas is like the sudden flaring of the moth caught in the flame. Lately he’s had a vision of simply lying down in the tall green meadow grass, and falling asleep, and feeling the grass stalks growing through his body, a thousand tiny piercings, until he is nothing but a husk.

  He pauses to catch breath against the rocky wall of the cliff. His breath forms clouds of condensation in the cold air. His rucksack feels heavier now. He can’t remember when he last ate. Probably at the village he left in the morning. He takes out a flask of water, drinks, and finds a small bag with trail mix and walks again.

  When he emerges from the narrow pass, he finds himself at a vertiginous height. Below him, lost in mist and distance, is a rocky, arid valley through which a silver river winds. On the other side the mountains are gaunt and bare, the white tongues of melting glaciers high on the slopes. But the place he seeks is immediately to his right, where the path leads. The stone facade of the monastery comes into view, a rocky aerie impossible to conceive of—how could anyone build here, halfway up to the sky?—but it is solid, it is there. So he walks on, up the narrow path, to the great flight of steps. The tiers of windows above him are empty, and there is an enormous hole in the roof of the entrance hall, through which he can see a lammergeier circling high in the blue sky. Could it be that the last refuge is destroyed after all? He had dreamed of a great university hidden deep in the Himalayas, a place where people like him could gather to weave the web that would save the dying world. He had dreamed of its destruction too, at the hands of greed and power. Can it have happened already?

  Wearily he sinks down on the dusty floor at the top of the steps. In the silence he hears his own breath coming fast, and the faint trickle of water in the distance. He is conscious of being watched.

  A man is standing on a fallen column. He is tall, dressed in rough black robes. There is some kind of small animal on his shoulder, brown, with a long, bushy tail—a squirrel, perhaps, or a mongoose?

  Yuan bows, clears his throat.

  “I dreamed of this place,” he says in English, hoping the monk can understand him. “I came here to try to do something before I die. But it’s too late, I see.”

  The monk gestures to him, and Yuan stumbles over broken pieces of stone, follows him around a corner into a small, high courtyard open to sun and sky.

  “Sit,” the monk says, indicating a low wooden seat. There is tea in a black kettle, steaming over a small fire. “Tell me about your dream of this place.” There is white stubble on his shaven chin, and deep lines are etched on the brown face. His English is fluent, with an accent that is vaguely familiar. Yuan clears his throat, speaks.

  “It was a monastery first, then a university. It was a place for those who sought to understand the world in a new way, and to bring about its resurrection. I saw the humblest people come here to share what they knew, and the learned ones listened. It didn’t have the quietude of the monastery it had once been—at every corner, in every gathering, I heard arguments and disagreements, but true peace is dynamic, not static, and rests on a thousand quarrels.

  “It wasn’
t a secret, although not many people knew about it. It was rumor and it was real, because at the university where I studied in Shanghai, there was a woman—a scientist from Nigeria—who spoke of this place. She came and taught for five days and nights. After that we were all changed. I got a new idea, and even though I was dying, I made sure it came to light. Then I thought I needed to find her, my teacher, and this place. Here and there I heard rumors that it had been destroyed—because there are people who will try to hasten the end of the world so they can make a profit. And this place stood in their way.

  “It was the hope of the world. I heard that there were branches in a few other places. There was an idea about connecting it through small world architecture to webs of information, webs of knowledge and people, to generate new ideas and, through redundancy, ensure their survival. If it hadn’t been destroyed before that hope was made real, its disappearance may not have mattered so much.”

  His voice fades, as he slumps to the ground. The monk gathers him up and carries him effortlessly through long corridors into a room of stone, where there is a rough bed. He wakes from his faint to see the wild creature sitting on a wooden stool by the bed, staring at him with dark, round eyes. The monk helps him up so he can sip hot yak butter tea, rich and aromatic. Then Yuan sleeps.

  Over five days and nights they talk, the monk and Yuan, sometimes in this room with its narrow windows, sometimes in the high, sunny courtyard.

  “This place was destroyed in an avalanche,” the monk tells him, pointing to the mountain behind them, from the high spur on which the monastery perches. “The glacier melted and brought down half the mountain with it. It rained boulders. Many were killed, and the place abandoned. I live here alone, except for the odd scientific team that comes to study the glacier.”

  Yuan is silent. So much for the university that would save the world. But how could his dreams be so vivid, if they weren’t true?