“Son?” Paul jumped and dropped his pencil. Papaji was standing in the garage, with his Latvian socks on his feet and a puzzled expression on his face. “What is this?”
Paul pressed his forefinger to his lips. “Papaji? Oh, this is my office.”
“Hánji. Why so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Papaji took in the whole operation.
“There is a matter we need to discuss,” Paul said. “I need to show you something.”
In a matter of moments Paul was going over the maps and diagrams of the city, trying to explain his theory about the disruptive digging across from the station.
“I think they are looking for something. That’s why they keep flushing the water out from below. That’s why they have the badmásh standing guard over the hole. See here?” He pointed to a map of the water system. “The pipes run right under the station.”
“What would they be looking for, I wonder?”
“Did the workers ever tell you anything?” Paul asked.
“No, no, but they do look suspicious. I can tell when a man is lying—that’s my gift.”
Paul laughed and said, “Well, what were they lying about?”
“We should find out ourselves.”
Paul and Papaji changed into working clothes. Paul helped Papaji slip his feet into an old pair of sneakers.
As Paul drove into town, he felt better than he had in years. He was a cowboy checking out the trouble at his station, and no one would stand in his way. Papaji was his sidekick who would back him up. The streets were completely empty. When they exited the car, he looked up at the early morning sky. The rain clouds had split and offered a glimpse of the still-starry sky above. They were lucky that the water had drained from the hole over the past two days.
Paul parked the car near the hole and asked his father to keep watch from the driver’s seat. If something happened, or someone came, he told him to switch the headlights on bright. In Paul’s fanny pack were several items: a small Maglite flashlight, a disposable camera with a flash, four empty sterile jars, and a few plastic baggies already labeled. On his feet were work boots. On his back was a black rain poncho. He wore a Yankees cap over his hair. In his pocket was his knife, freshly sharpened. He wished he had a rope ladder, but he only had a wooden one, which he dropped down, down, down, ten feet into the hole. He waved to Papaji, who was sitting in the car, key in the ignition, his hand on the headlight switch, ready to turn them on at a moment’s notice.
Paul entered the hole with the flashlight in his teeth and his eyes agape, observing the different layers of earth as he went. First he saw asphalt and tar, then gray and cracked concrete. Brick and cobblestone came next. He imagined what this town would look like paved in hand-cut stone. The layer beneath was sand, then finally he came to brown soil. He’d thought the soil would have been black, but with the unnatural layers suffocating the earth, how could it breathe? He saw dismembered roots spear the rocks though no tree stood above.
When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he jumped into the cold water. It covered his calves and soaked into his jeans. With the flashlight still in his mouth, he unscrewed a jar and dipped it into the water, which smelled sweet and a little like chlorine, and then he filled a few baggies with samples of the soil. When he was all set, he inspected the sides of the hole. It was strange to be standing in a cross-section of the earth. He wondered what was below him. How far was it to the next layer of sedimentary rock, to the core? He remembered what they had told him when he bought the gas station. Leaking is inevitable, the inspector had said. That’s why he’d installed a failsafe system. It was expensive, but he didn’t want his gasoline to leak. Gasoline cost a lot, but most of all, Paul didn’t want his business to harm the town he’d grown to love, even though the storms and freezing winters made it difficult to like. The forest here was lush. The ferns were plentiful. The rivers were full and content. They were growing fuller with all the rain. He rubbed his bare hand against the earth, then took the ladder in his hand and ascended, one rung at a time.
Papaji was sitting in the car. Paul half expected him to be in the station or driving the Cutlass in circles. At that image he laughed. He’d done it. He’d gone into the hole and gotten samples. It was still quiet. He waved to his father and began to pull the ladder from the earth’s open mouth. A car was coming from the opposite direction. Papaji flashed the high beams at the car to blind the driver. Paul dropped the ladder on the asphalt and dove behind the side of his car. The other car passed them slowly. The headlights were bright and illuminated every imperfection of the road that Paul could see from under the car. Soon it was gone, and only the red rear lights shone in the darkness. He looked inside the blue whale and saw Papaji, like a manatee, spread flat against the seat. He tapped on the window.
“So?” Papaji asked.
“So,” Paul answered and shook the bags full of samples. He looked over at his station and felt it looked different somehow. He squinted in the darkness and saw that the tire rack with his spare tire inventory was gone. A pink piece of paper was adhered to the door to the convenience store. They’d done it.
In less than three minutes they were back at home, and in only ten minutes Papaji was in his bed. Paul went back to the garage to work a little more. His nerves were shot; his hands were shaking. He knew if he didn’t get to the bottom of this soon, he would be in financial ruin.
The following day, Paul mailed the samples to the Creative Services Laboratory, to the care of Mrs. Shari Lawrence in Mason City. The website said it would only take one week to process the samples—then he’d know what was really down there. That night Paul dreamed he’d slipped through his bed into the center of earth, and that the core resembled the village in India where he grew up.
On the Wing
Endangered Karner Blue / G2 Imperiled Status
Posted on October 19
There is something strange afoot here in Cobalt, New York. I feel it. Every time I feel I am getting closer, the answers slip from my fingers. It seems as though someone does not want me to know more about the butterfly, or about the peculiar goings-on.
Though I will not disclose the location specifically—you will just have to take my word for it—I came across a hole in the earth that leads to a sort of collection of passageways under Cobalt. The surroundings around the mouth of what I will now call the mineshaft (for what else could it be?) is showing strange symptoms of poisoned earth. The last time I entered the hole, I spotted another one of these mutant butterflies. It was so close to death, having been born with an incomplete body, not fully metamorphosed. I don’t know what to do about my findings, as they aren’t really concrete. However, I feel that I’ve stumbled upon something. These two things have to be connected. Nothing in nature is coincidence.
As I was observing a few small whites flying playfully in a splash of sun—as they are always seeking warmth, being cold-blooded creatures and all—I realized how my eyes had longed to see a butterfly or anything flying in the air around town. When it is cold and cloudy, sometimes I will not see an insect at all, as they mostly hibernate. Butterflies in the area that are born from their chrysalis late in the year tend to go into suspended animation called diapause in order to survive the harsh cold. I’ve heard that butterflies in the Arctic do this in order to be there to pollinate the flowers in the springtime. I feel saddened at the end of a season. I do not look forward to the cold. The encroaching cold reminds me that I will not see many of my favorite sights for months. I take comfort in the thought that they will return when the sun strengthens. I can’t imagine what it would be like for the ice to melt next spring and still not see them flying. Endangerment and extinction terrify me more than anything else.
The Karner Blue, lycaeides melissa samuleis, Plebejus, was named by the famous Vladimir Nabokov after the town in which he’d first identified it: Karner, New York. For a small creature, it has a lot of names. I’ve never seen one, not here—too far south from the
Capitol district. But it is quite extraordinary even in photographs. The male’s topside is a bright vibrant blue with pumpkin crescents; the female is a grayish brown. They both have a smattering of black spots circled in white. I am going to collect some photos to see if this Singh Blue could be a Karner gynandromorph.
Why is the Karner endangered? That’s the question many lepidopterists are asking. Some believe its decline is correlated to the destruction of its main food source, the lupine. Others worry about the lack of canopy under which the females seek shelter and shade to deposit their eggs. Many agree with that one detail, whether the Karner prefers living in flowering lupine or not, whether it likes oak savannahs, old fields or pine barrens—they all believe it’s habitat destruction that has caused its demise. Sometimes nature, too, makes creatures not fit for the environment.
I read about a moth in a museum in London that emerged from its cocoon as a gynandromorph. Half of its body was female and the other half male, though it wasn’t as complete as a true hermaphrodite and lacked complete anatomy to actually reproduce as a male or female. It’s amazing to see, but also, so sad. If this is a Karner gynandromorph, then nature is playing a cruel joke on us all. Instead of producing an endangered creature, she offers this newly emerged butterfly nothing. Without the ability to mate or lay eggs, its birth and death will not impact their already struggling species.
1 COMMENT
I agree; I am sorry. It’s almost like a harsh message from the wild stating her time is almost over. —BF Girl NY
Maija
She sat up in bed, her fingers clutching the warm comforter that had cocooned her during the frosty and wet night. As her pounding heart maintained a dangerous rate, she caught her breath. The nightmare still lingered precariously on the edge of her waking mind. Just a dream. She exhaled and turned on the lamp. Three scenes replayed in her mind as the rest of the unintelligible dreamscape faded into the background: a sea of people dying from a plague, rising water consuming land, and finding her favorite slippers, which had slid under the living room couch. She’d missed the comfort they gave her aching feet after work. Maija turned toward Paul’s half of the bed, smiling at this possibility. That was when she realized he wasn’t there. The mattress was cold. The clock read four in the morning. The image of the plague returned.
She put on her robe and walked around the quiet house. She could hear her son’s and daughter’s familiar breathing sounds, Oma’s light snore, and Papaji’s grumbling. She walked through the kitchen, and when she turned into the living room, she noticed that the garage door was open a crack. She entered and saw a small glimmer of light behind the tall wall of boxes, and she followed it to Paul, discovering him inside some sort of rickety office, asleep atop the makeshift desk. His hair, without a turban, was mussed. Stunned, Maija took in the maps, charts, and lists hanging on the walls. For a split second she wondered if Paul had suffered a schizophrenic breakdown. She moved closer to read the headlines of the newspaper clippings: Water Main Down on Main Street, PMI’s Doors Close as Unemployment Office Doors Open, Community Group Angry over Unexplained Construction. She knew he was upset about the construction on Main Street. Who wasn’t?
Maija didn’t know what to do. If she woke Paul, then he’d know she knew about his office—and she wanted him to confide in her naturally. But she couldn’t leave him in the chilly garage. Maija tapped him on the shoulder, then scurried back into the house and into bed. Within a few minutes, Paul’s cold body joined her under the covers, and all was as it should have been, or close to it.
Her nightmares, however, continued to pester her throughout her morning at Jones Drugs as she counted pills, controlled medicinal interactions, and served her customers their weekly cures. Seeing the plague victims’ faces, covered in rashes and boils, was most difficult. Others, trapped in a flood, gasped for air as they swallowed more and more water, just as Eleanora had done in Maija’s earlier visions. Her dream had been so real she could smell the sea and feel the sting of salt in her throat. At times like this, when Maija encountered something premonitory, she felt absolutely alone. She’d thought her mother’s presence here in Cobalt would comfort her, but it hadn’t. The dreams and visions remained solely her property, like a haunted house she couldn’t sell.
With her doubt and fear building steadily, the pressures of work almost pushed Maija over the edge. Every phone line in the pharmacy lit up. Tom and Shandy did their parts, and Maija dove in as well.
“Hello, pharmacy.”
“Maija, it’s Eleanora. Could you deliver Tracy’s prescriptions? It’s just not possible for us to come in today.” And she hung up without listening to Maija’s response.
Maija took the opportunity to get out of the pharmacy, even if it was a drive to her least favorite development to visit her least favorite family.
As she drove up the hill to the Heights, Maija could see from this vantage point exactly how saturated the ground had become: Small streams leading nowhere ran down through the trees, and mud and soil that usually held trees firmly in the ground had turned into swamp, the roots defenseless. Peculiar how unprepared the ground had been for so much water—there was just too much. Sandbags were piled around the entryways into low-lying houses. Maija shook her head as her car fishtailed into a turn past the gate in the Heights.
The door into the Finch residence was open just a bit when she arrived. Peculiar, she thought. With security system and the paranoia she’d seen earlier, she never expected to walk right in through an open door.
“Hello?” she said to the quiet foyer.
The air inside was still. With the small white bag in her hand, filled with bottles of antibiotics and opiate painkillers, she went toward the kitchen, where she heard voices. She hid behind a wall and listened.
“The school called, Nora. Some kids have the flu,” said a man, who Maija assumed was Herbert Finch.
“Tracy’s not there. Why’d they call?” Eleanora said.
“They just went down the list. Still haven’t traced the origins,” Herbert responded.
“I wish Tracy only had the flu,” Eleanora said.
“I do, too. But she’s—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Maija heard Eleanora’s heels tap across the tiled floor. “This is your fault. You couldn’t pass up that deal, could you?”
“This again? You were with me during the development. You were there when I signed the deed. When I bought you that ring and those clothes, it didn’t seem to bother you. But now you’re mad? You’re no better than me.”
“Now our daughter has—”
“We don’t know the cause. Not for sure.”
“I know. I know because I am her mother.”
“There you go again with that intuition crap.”
As Maija listened, she looked around the spotless house. She saw not one single speck of dust and not one flower arrangement out of place. Suddenly she heard a voice behind her.
“Mrs. Singh?”
When she turned, she realized she should have known the face looking up at her, but it was a shade of whom she’d been, even a short time ago. Tracy’s eyes were sunken into her skull, her blue eyes bluer because of the redness in them. Her hair was wet, as were her pajamas. “Dear Tracy, were you outside? In this mess?”
“I needed some air.”
Eleanora and Herbert turned the corner.
“Tracy? Why are you wet? Were you in the park again? I told you not to go out there. You’ll catch a cold!” Eleanora went to Tracy and wiped her face with a dishtowel.
“Yeah, whatever.” Tracy shrugged off her mother and walked slowly up the stairs.
Maija handed the bag of medicine to Eleanora. “Here you go. Let me know if you have any questions.” She walked toward the front door.
“Um, Maija…” Eleanora’s voice cracked.
“Yes?” She turned.
“Nothing. Drive safe out there.”
“Yes.” Maija jogged to her car. This was too much. Tracy was
ill. There was a flu outbreak at school. Eleanora blamed Herbert for something. How could he have caused Tracy’s illness? That was impossible.
When she returned to the pharmacy, the phones were ringing off the hook.
“Pharmacy.”
“Mrs. Singh, please.”
“Speaking.”
“This is Mrs. Cohen’s secretary at Cobalt High.”
Maija’s heart sank, and she pressed the receiver closer to her ear. Mrs. Cohen’s secretary requested that she or Paul, or even Oma, please retrieve both Vic and Isabella as both were “vomiting like there’s no tomorrow.” She said there was a flu outbreak at Cobalt High and almost half the students were green, turning green, or at the worst stage: pale as a sheet. That’s the stage her children, as it turned out, had reached. As soon as Maija hung up the phone, the pit in her stomach grew. An epidemic was component number one of her apocalyptic nightmare.
Maija surveyed her surroundings and saw that Tom had already left on his mid-morning sandwich run to Wegmans, which meant she was manning the pill ship alone. She knew that Paul was busy at the station and she couldn’t bother him. Oma and Papaji didn’t have a car at the ready, not that they could drive with one almost blind and the other with only one foot. Maija grabbed her purse and keys and locked the register.
Balance of Fragile Things Page 18
