by Rick Bass
It took them a long time to find him, that next day; he had traveled a long way, beyond the reach of roads: past high cliffs and bluffs and pinnacles, as if passing beneath the walls of civilizations in which the searchers were not welcome—civilizations from which they themselves might have been exiled, as had perhaps Herbert Mix himself, but to which he had returned.
They found his jeep and, fearing and then expecting the worst, found the telltale scrabble marks of where he had clawed his way down the steep bank and into the river. Both Richard and Ruth had driven out searching, as had two other men from town, and Marie had insisted on joining them also.
They spent much of the morning searching up and down the river in that general area, trying to find a sign of where he might have worked his way back to shore and managed to climb out, or perhaps might still be holding on, gripping valiantly to a rock ledge or root-wad, exhausted and current-shuddered, but still with them.
They cast out into the desert too, searching the pristine dunes, which were smoothed over from the day-before’s winds, for the stippled or slithering evidence of his escape. They were dressed in brightly colored shirts, so that they could each see where the other was, even across the distance.
Marie wanted to cry, and felt a pulling apart in her old chest—an ache at both the loneliness and familiarity of it—but she felt a fear, also, at what she perceived as the inescapability of it; and in that fear, and that closing-in feeling of constriction, she knew anger, too, and resolved not to let her heart, fragile and ancient though it was, be pulled any further apart. She tensed, tried to protect and harden her old heart, and continued the search.
It was Richard who found him, so many miles down the river, the body as brilliant as the white belly of a beached whale, visible from a distance on the ivory-colored sand beach onto which he had managed to crawl, half-washed there by the rapids and half-arrived there under his own final labors.
And across the expanse of sand behind him, Richard signaled to the others to come join him, that he had found him; and from all directions and distances, they converged, and climbed carefully down a rubbly slot canyon to the white sand beach below, where the old man, so clearly identifiable even from a distance as Herbert Mix, lay stretched out on his back, staring skyward.
Had his eyes still been sighted, he would have seen them appear over the bluff, would surely have welcomed the appearance of their bright shirts moving toward him, their wavering figures conjoining then separating again.
Through the heat and the miracle of mirage, they might have appeared, in that shimmering curtain of sunlight, like some apparition from the past: a runaway stagecoach, or a band of Kiowa pursuing a caravan of Mexican salt traders.
Instead, he saw nothing, his hungry eyes finally as sightless as a skull’s, and his breath finally stilled. The wind stirred his silvery hair. The images converged into the present, including among them a woman and a man who had loved him; and in the present, they hurried toward him, carrying their grief now as if burdened by heavy bags of gold.
The funeral was held on a Sunday, a raw and windy day in Mormon Springs in which the new scarves flapped and swirled in all directions. There was a community potluck that evening, held at the school—Marie was in the midst of packing, preparing to depart with the weavers, or it would have been held at her house—and the next day, the townspeople helped the silk weavers fold their tents and carefully disassembled the looms, storing each in its proper place in their trunks and crates and steamer chests.
The aging silk moths were turned loose that evening—as if from out of nowhere, birds began to appear, swarming them—while the younger, more vital moths and worms were stored in mesh containers and loaded into the back of a van in which blocks of ice were set in brackets atop mounted tables, to help keep the interior cooled.
It was harder for Marie to leave Annie than anything she had ever done; far harder than enduring the terrors of the salt lake, and harder than the discovery of her gentle lover washed up along the beach. And yet even in her tears, she felt herself filling with a happiness that she supposed was almost as strong as the love of a partner, and which she suspected could in some ways be its superior, in certain ways that had been lacking from her life. It helped her to know that it was the right decision for Annie—that the child needed someone far younger, that Ruth would be a perfect mother for her from here on out—but still, it grieved her, and she wondered too if her grief at losing Herbert Mix was affecting her.
There would be no more children—no Annie—but she would be able to come and see her again someday, perhaps on another tour. Or perhaps Annie would come and see her, traveling to Asia.
How would my life have been different if I had gone with Mufti, she wondered, so long ago, and where would I be? What would I have seen, and what would I have missed? She felt a current of understanding for Herbert Mix, felt for a moment his clamant ravenousness for the joys and treasures the world had to offer. Of course he had wanted them all. She considered those that might only now lie just before her, and again, despite her sadness, she knew excitement and wonder, and a thing that surely had to be happiness, she had seen it in the faces and lives of other people, it seemed characterized by a lack of emptiness. Surely this was it.
It would soon be Christmas break. The plan was made for Annie to move in with Ruth: Annie the loser yet again, seemingly, in these shifts of affections in the hearts of adults, these nearly tectonic yearnings and adjustments not dissimilar to the ones that stirred and broke apart and reformed in her own heart, but about which she could not yet do as much, other than to submerge.
There was no will, no probate. Richard moved into Herbert Mix’s old museum and converted it into an office for the school’s water-finding venture. He let dust gather on the relics Herbert Mix had spent his life accumulating and cataloging and cleaning. The willows in the backyard, unpruned, grew still wilder, casting shade over the entire warehouse, and here, too, the bright migrant songbirds gathered.
It was lonely out at the warehouse, and lonely in town, so Richard moved out to Mormon Springs: not into Clarissa’s old falling-down house, but into what had been Marie and Annie’s home—almost as if following them, always a few years behind; to the loft, first, and now to their little house in Mormon Springs: and with more of the path still open and available to him.
They drilled their first water well two days before Christmas, completing it on an evening when the wind was strong from the north and the stars burned so fiercely it seemed they might melt their way down through the night’s blackness.
They were all gathered, children and parents alike, and Ruth and Richard, with a bonfire going, much like on the night of Richard’s return to Odessa.
There was no spectacle this evening, only quiet murmurings of excitement, and when the drillstring was pulled and laid on its rack, the heavy pipe flashing and glittering in the starlight, the drill bit as jagged as the jaws of a dragon, they could all smell the scent of the fresh water, the isolated subsurface aquifer that had never been entered: fossil water that had not seen the surface of the world, neither the heat of day nor the stars of night, in over a hundred thousand years.
The drillers ran a swab down the hole, a piston, to pull some of the fluid up from the depths. They had brought a little gas-powered pump, and they attached it to the wellhead, and began pumping up some sample water for all those who had gathered to taste.
It was like no well birthing, no drilling, Richard had ever been to. There was no scent of sulfur, no belch of flame, no burp of gas; no sour-sweet smell of oil. Instead, it smelled like a deep cold lake at night, or like a trickling creek running over clear stones beneath the arbor, the canopy, of oaks.
They had brought all manner of cups—paper and plastic, crystal wineglasses, coffee mugs, tumblers—and one by one they filled them, sampling the delicious, ancient water that was theirs; and it seemed to them all to be the best water they had ever tasted, and nearly intoxicating.
It was not R
ichard’s water, nor was it exclusively Annie’s. They had all helped find it, had carefully tracked it, and now they claimed it.
They had brought empty bottles and thermoses, empty cans and bottles, and like migrants who have come upon a distant oasis, rather than the residents they would continue being, for a little while longer at least, they filled their containers to take home with them that night, filling them with the same intensity of pleasure with which another might fill a treasure chest with gold doubloons. Then they drove home, a procession of community, taillights blinking through the desert; while beyond them, as always, the towering, scattered candles of the gas flares wavered and leapt in the distance.
The children and Richard’s wells continued to find water—new water, clean water, water not contaminated by the oil or gas or any other residue from above. It was the last of the last, and Richard knew it, at some level they all knew it—but there was suddenly so much of it again, and it was so delicious: and they had earned it, there was the pride of discovery, pride of ownership, pride of independence, again.
The water was secure in their lives once more; they were no longer hostage to the vagaries of its imminent going-away. They showered in it nightly in their own homes, they built a community fountain for the children to play in, they filled their birdbaths with it in their backyards, they watered their roses with it.
The village shone, glinted in the winter sunlight. Their gardens prospered and the trees grew shadier around the town’s perimeter; and for a long time, the villagers knew neither deep want nor hunger, and felt they had no need of second chances. There were unresolved needs and desires among all of them from time to time—Annie, in particular, wanted her parents, her real parents, and Ruth—with Richard, now—occasionally wanted more space and time. She wanted the world, and something more, for which she didn’t know the name—and even in his happiness, his peace and contentment, Richard still sometimes felt as if he should want Clarissa back, even if he didn’t.
One year, a circus came to town. Annie was nearly grown, a beautiful young woman who looked more and more, the townspeople thought, and as is often the case in such instances, like her adopted father.
The tent, the Big Top, was erected, not in Odessa or Mormon Springs, but out in the desert. People came from both towns to see it, parked out in the desert amidst the caverns and walked carefully along paths lit by lamps to reach the tent, which was similarly lit from within, glowing in a huge dome of gold.
One by one, the performers and their acts entered the ring: clowns juggling, lions roaring, circus masters cracking the whip. Beautiful women walking dangerous tightropes high above the audience, with no sign of a safety net, and no harness: the crowd rapt, conjoined as if one. Annie’s hand clenched tightly in her father’s, Ruth shoulder to shoulder with her husband. And then the elephant, looking as old as time: looking as if he was bound for the boneyard, and yet appearing durable and dignified, too.
The circus master scanned the audience, peered up into the many bleachers, asked for a volunteer.
“I need someone brave, I need someone beautiful,” he called through his megaphone. “I need someone to ride on the back of this magnificent beast while lions and tigers leap about beneath his ancient feet. I need someone unafraid to die,” the circus master bellowed, “I need someone unafraid to live.”
Ruth and Annie were elbowing each other, teasing each other to volunteer, each on the verge of raising their hands.
Richard leaned in front of them so that they couldn’t raise their hands. No other volunteers were forthcoming. He raised his own hand, laughed at the startlement of his wife and daughter, and at the circus master’s gaze.
The elephant, who had seen it all before, pivoted a quarter turn to see who had answered the challenge. Across that distance, the elephant beheld him, and Richard rose from his seat in the bleachers and went down to meet him.
Acknowledgments
Novels don’t come easily. I’ve been fortunate to do three, now four—one with my beloved editor Camille Hykes, and one with the late Harry Foster, and a previous one with Nicole Angeloro, all of Houghton Mifflin, via the publishing imprint of the late Seymour Lawrence. One per decade, or thereabouts. It’s an intense relationship—editor and writer sitting on an ever-changing, ever-stirring hatchling, while the rest of the world as well as the animal of the novel changes across the days and across the years—and I’m amazed by the fortitude, talent, passion, and endurance of these editors. If those qualities aren’t somehow the underpinnings of a kind of reckless courage, I don’t know what is.
I’m in deepest gratitude to Melissa Dobson for inspired copyediting and line editing, and to Patrick Barry for the haunting, striking cover artwork and (again!) the jacket design. Likewise I’m grateful to Melissa Lotfy for the book’s elegant interior design, and to Michael Hill for the book’s title. Thanks also to Dan Janeck for his proofreading and to Beth Burleigh Fuller, the production editor.
I’m in debt also to the editors of quarterlies who edited and published excerpts of this novel—Tom Jenks, Carol Edgarian, and Mimi Kusch at Narrative; Ben George at Tin House; Michael Ray at Zoetrope; Cassie Nelson at Camas; and Ron Carlson and Aaron Peters at Faultline. I’m grateful to my father, Charles Bass, for teaching me how to find oil and gas, among other things, and to my agent, Bob Dattila, retired now, after having been ridden hard and put up wet, financially speaking, while in the service of literary authors for his entire career, who is in this novel in so many ways.
Present throughout, too, is my editor for this novel, Nicole Angeloro. I do some teaching these days, and while it is easy enough to be a curmudgeon and even a hard-ass with students’ prose that isn’t quite working, I will try always to remember that there can be no four more powerful words to a writer than “I believe in you.”
Prologue
For a little while, the children—Maxine, Jim Ed, Bonnie—were too young to know the weight of their gift, or even that their lives were hard. Their parents had always been poor, but never before had there been such desperation. Never before had there been a time when one’s talents—whether hunter or farmer, salesman or tailor—had been insufficient to keep food in the mouths of their family. Now the country was saying the Depression had ended, but where they lived, in south-central Arkansas, not so far from Mississippi—back in the swamps, between the rolling ridges that looked down on Poplar Creek—nothing was different. Things had been bad before the Depression, then got much worse during it, and people were not yet recovering, even though what little news they heard back in the hills told them that everything was better now.
The children’s parents, Floyd and Birdie, were still starving, still ravenous—still wondering why they had been put on earth, why they had been brought into the world.
But for a while, the children didn’t know this despair. They would have breathed it like the fog vapors that rose some nights from the swamp, would have absorbed it night and day, until it became so wreathed within them that soon enough it would have begun to replace the spirits with which they had come into the world: but not yet, not then. Floyd was drinking hard and logging harder, felling the oaks and hickories with axes and crosscut saws and sledging them out of the swamp with mules and, when the mules were injured, with men too poor sometimes to afford even a cup of fuel for their bulldozers and tractors—and so their gnawings at the old forest seemed as infinitesimal as they were ceaseless. It seemed that the old forest might grow back in just as fast as the men could sledge the logs out.
The places where they worked opened the forest briefly to the sky, let in little patches of white light in which ferns and orchids grew, blossomed, and prospered briefly before the young canopy closed back in over such clearings.
The children, before they knew their calling, sat at the edge of the creek next to one such clearing and watched the slow muddy waters of Poplar Creek drift past. The nearest town, Sparkman, was eight miles away. To them the world was still beautiful, and only beautiful. They s
at there quietly, in the last free days before they became aware that they had a gift—not a gift they had asked for or labored toward, but which had been impressed on them from birth—and they waited, one must assume, for the wisps of despair and misery to begin to soak into their skin like the smoke from the burning of the slash piles, blue smoke hanging in sunlit rafts all throughout the forest, as if a great war were being fought, one about which they knew nothing, one of which they were entirely unaware.
The Fire
HER FIRST MEMORY is of heroism and stardom, of great accomplishment and acclaim, even in the midst of ruin.
She was five years old, firmly in the nest of her family, at her aunt and uncle’s cabin. The adults were in the front room, sitting in front of the drafty fireplace. Maxine was sleeping in the back room on a shuck mattress, Jim Ed was on a pallet, and Bonnie was in her cradle. Maxine awoke to the sight of orange and gold flickerings the shapes and sizes of the stars, and beyond those, real stars.
The view grew wider.
Stirred by the breezes of their own making, the sparks turned to flames, and burning segments of cedar-shake roofing began to curl and float upward like burning sheets of paper.
She lay there, waiting, watching.
It was not until the first sparks landed on her bed that she broke from her reverie and leapt up and lifted Bonnie from her cradle and Jim Ed from his pallet, a baby in each arm, and ran into the next room, a cinder smoking in her wild black hair, charging out into the lanternlight of the front room as if onto a stage, calling out the one word, Fire, with each of the adults paying full and utmost attention to her, each face limned with respect, waiting to hear more.
