Love and Hydrogen

by Jim Shepard

  I cruised over, a lazy trail of bubbles.

  They made their discovery. I hovered nearby in the deeper water, stroking every so often to remain upright. A few of them picked up shattered objects and examined them. There were a number of urgent motions and decisive gestures. Kay was trundled back to the small boat and the entire group returned to the bigger one. On its deck, crates were wrenched open and still more rifles passed around. Rifles were exchanged and admired.

  The sun toiled across the sky. Above the wavelets the steamy air was thick enough to bite. I dozed, watching them bustle.

  The water cooled. The moon rose. Frogs made their early evening chucking noises. A giant damselfly pulled a big spider out of its web and bit it in half, dropping the head and legs and devouring the rest.

  BY THE NEXT DAY the visitors were again anxiety-free. In the morning they putt-putted back ashore in their small boat, and scooped and chipped away at the bank of rock. Fragments piled up and were sifted. The sifters complained.

  Kay, reclining in the shade with her back to the work, looked entranced. “And I thought the Mississippi was something,” she mused to her companions, who kept working, pouring sweat. In the afternoon, everyone returned to the bigger boat and slept like lizards on the deck in the heat, heads or arms sprawled over one another.

  I decided to spend more time on the bottom of the lagoon. I was alternately appalled and bemused by my need to spy. I got the sulks. I kept my distance.

  Over the years I’d been continuously taken aback by the ingenuity with which I could disappoint myself.

  I heard a splash.

  Kay swam on her back away from the boat in my direction, cutting widening wake-lines into the sunlight above her. I watched her cruise by. I left the bottom, and swam on my back beneath her for a stretch, as if her reflection.

  When she stopped, I sank lower into the murk. She turned, did somersaults; played, in some obscure way. Resting, she treaded water.

  I ascended and drifted a talon into one of her kicking legs, which jerked upward. I dove. She dove. Vegetative murk billowed up around us. She surfaced and swam back to the boat. Suddenly ferocious, I followed. It was an exciting race, which I lost. She climbed a ladder out just ahead of my arrival.

  Braced on the bottom in the ooze, I took the keel and uprooted it with both arms. Tons of displaced water surged and rocked. On the deck above, boxes slid and smashed and shinbones barked against wheelhouses.

  I climbed up a convenient rope to give them a look. They each produced individualized noises of consternation. I made my peccary snarl and backhanded a lantern hanging on the rail into the water. Everyone held up their favorite rifle and I dove back in.

  I surfaced on the other side of the boat. “The lantern must have frightened him,” Kay said. In the middle of the afternoon.

  Within minutes, two men came after me, with little masks on their faces and breathing tubes in their mouths. Bubbles bubbled from their heads. Back in the deep reeds, I watched them churn by overhead, a body’s length away, and then swam the other direction. I backstroked through the weeds. They seemed to have trouble following. I did an underwater plié. They spotted me. Their legs thrashed and pounded inefficiently. More bubbles bubbled. This went on for some time.

  AND AGAIN THE NEXT DAY they went about their business.

  I kept being drawn to them and their leaking hippo-belly of a boat.

  This whole thing had affected me. My eye glands were secreting. I rubbed my face on tree bark. I urinated on my feet.

  Normally for me the geologic periods came and went, and normally I had the tender melancholic patience of a floodplain, but with them in the lagoon I found myself foolish and hopeful, carp-toothed. I was a creature of two minds, one of them as unteachable as the swamp. I wanted to make this signal event a signal event. I wanted to become something.

  TO THEM I WAS the unknown Amazon embodied—who knew what lay undiscovered in those hidden back waters?—and still they lounged and chatted. They flirted. They acted as if they were home.

  At midday, one wilted crewmember stood guard. He exchanged vacant stares with a cotton-topped tamarin eating its stew of bugs and tree gum on a shoreline branch. The rest of the group squab-bled below deck.

  I hauled myself back up the rope—why didn’t they just pull up the rope?—and schlumped past the porthole while they argued. I was dripping all over the planking. I grabbed the crewmember by both sides of his head and toppled us over the rail.

  His internal workings ran down on shore later that night. I sat with him with my elbows on my knees. Every so often he got his breath back. A yellow tree boa angled forward from a branch but I waved it away. He called out to the boat. They called back.

  They built a cage. Bamboo.

  THEY ROWED AROUND in their smaller boat dumping powder all over their section of the lagoon. It paralyzed the fish, which floated to the surface. A few eyed me dazedly on the way up.

  While they worked, I waited under their larger boat. It seemed safer there.

  That night they lined the deck stem to stern under their lanterns, their rifles nosed out toward the darkness. I bobbed under the curve of the bow. Off in the distance, a giant tree fell, shearing its way through canyons of canopy, opening up new opportunities.

  “Do you suppose he remembers being chased and intends to take revenge?” Kay asked.

  “I’ve got a hunch this creature remembers the past and more,” her favorite male answered. He watched his own arms whenever he moved so I named him Baby Sloth.

  I floated and listened while they tried to get under the rock of my primitive reasons. How sly was it possible I was? How instinctual? “Just what do you think we’re dealing with here, Doctor?” I heard Baby Sloth ask.

  I cleared my throat. I cleaned bone bits from my talons. Hours passed. I listened to the quiet crunch of beetle larvae chewing through the boat’s hull. One by one, the talkers above me ran out of words and announced they were going to sleep. There were dull, resonant sounds of them settling in below. I sank, my neck back, only my face above the dark water. For some reason I thought of scorpions, those brainless aggravations who went back as far as I did.

  Back up into the night air tiptoed Kay, with Baby Sloth. They whispered. The sound carried. “How much more time do you think you’ll need?” I heard her tease. “From where I’m sitting, a lifetime,” I heard him answer. One more time, I hauled myself up the rope.

  I slipped and tumbled over the railing, sending the shock of my greeting across the deck. Kay shrieked. She was within arm’s reach. Baby Sloth swung, whonking me with his rifle butt. I knocked him overboard. Others came stumbling up from below. They ringed me as if everyone was ready to charge but no one harbored any unreasonable expectations.

  I grabbed Kay and tilted us over the rope and into the water.

  I surfaced to let her fill her lungs. There was splashing behind me. I dove and towed her through my secret underwater passageway. Particles of their powder were suspended in the water even at this depth and I could feel them befuddling me.

  In my hidden cavern, I rose from the water and lugged her around. “Kay!” Baby Sloth called, hoarse from held breath. I splotched along in the shallow water puddling the rocks. “Kay!” he called again. I bellowed some response.

  I had no stamina. Everything was too much work. I laid her out on a shelf and then, once he knelt next to her, surfaced from a convenient nearby pool. I approached him woozily, planning mayhem. He bounced a head-sized rock off my face. He stabbed at my chest. I lifted him up and started working my talons into his ribs. Gunshots, from all those rifles, made little fire tunnels through my back and shoulders. The others had found the land entrance to my lair. A headache came on. I put him down.

  I turned from him. Kay gave another shriek, for someone’s benefit. They all fired again. I staggered past them to the land entrance and out into the warmer air. “That’s enough,” I heard Baby Sloth tell the others. “Let him go.”

  Lianas patted
and dabbed at my face. Day or night? I couldn’t tell. I walked along bleeding and gaping. The path was greasy with mud. My feet were scuffling buckets filling with stones. I hallucinated friends. I could hear them all cautiously following. I headed for the lagoon.

  What was less saddening, finally, than a narcissist’s solitude? I’d been drawn to Kay the way insects singled out the younger shoots or leaves not yet toughened or toxic. I’d added nothing but judgment and violence to the world. If their law, like the lagoon’s, was grim and casual, they at least took what they found and tried to make the best of it.

  So they liked to disassemble their surroundings and tinker with them. Was it such a shame that they didn’t save all the parts?

  Once in the water I sank to my knees down a slope, the muck giving way in clouds. I was happy they’d turned me out. I was rooting against me. I was less their shadow side than an oafish variant on a theme. Extinction was pouring over me like a warm flood, history swirling and eddying one last time before moving on, and I was like the pain of a needle frond in the foot: I filled the moment entirely, and then vanished.

  RUNWAY

  He often wondered, sitting at the window watching Billy and Theophilus play in the street, what he would do if one of them were hit by a car. Billy sat against the telephone pole, where he always did, near the end of the driveway, throwing a chewed-up tennis ball off the tire of a parked car. The ball perpetually fooled Theophilus with its change of direction. Depending on how Billy threw it, the ball would ricochet or arc softly back, and the dog, sprinting at the first motion of his arm, was endlessly surprised by all trajectories. One ricochet caught the dog squarely in the forehead, and it wobbled comically and flopped over onto the pavement.

  WITH A SON LIKE BILLY you don’t wonder things like that, Jay would find himself saying while shaving. He would peer at his image in the mirror.

  And in the living room, nights, watching television with Billy on the floor in front of him, he’d think, Has the boy ever come close to doing anything reckless? Has the boy been anything less than all he should be?

  He sat before the TV and clasped and unclasped the arms of his chair. He nudged his son with his foot.

  “Quit it,” Billy said.

  “This is a good show,” Jay said. “In case you didn’t notice.”

  Billy made a small dismissive noise.

  “By the way,” Jay said. “Has anyone ever given you high praise? Anybody ever tell you you were the greatest?”

  “You did,” Billy said. “Yesterday.”

  Their eyes went back to the TV, and Jay drummed his fingers on his knee.

  “Oh,” Anne said, on the sofa. It was her terminal boredom voice. She had a film book, a big coffee table thing, on her lap. She’d gotten it on a good deal from a publisher’s clearinghouse. He could see Garbo upside down, regarding them.

  David Janssen was squinting at the street through some venetian blinds. Jay had lost the story for a second. What was he doing inside the house?

  “So where do you go on these walks of yours?” Anne asked.

  “I’m watching,” Jay said.

  “He won’t tell you,” Billy said.

  Anne flipped a few more pages in her film book. She closed it with a thump.

  There was a commercial and Jay stood up. He saw Anne looking at him and crossed to her and leaned over, his hands on his thighs, as if examining her face microscopically.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Anne finally said.

  “You’re very beautiful,” Jay said. He said it as if after much debate as to how to put it.

  “I know,” Anne said. “I’m gorgeous. Where’re you going?”

  He kissed her, and held the kiss longer than she expected. Then he straightened up.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “You sound tired,” he said.

  “I am tired.” She switched off the lamp and looked back at the television. She was eighteen in its light. “This is over. I’ll turn it off.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’ll be back in a little while.” He touched his wife’s ear, for a good-bye, and slipped away.

  THEOPHILUS HAD almost been hit once, by an old Le Sabre. Jay heard the screech but no body sound and no horn, and he reacted, he remembered later, like he was underwater, swimming futilely toward the front door and the yard in time to see Anne already crouching over the dog, making sure it was all right, with another arm on Billy’s shoulder. Billy was lifting and dropping Theo’s front paw in a rudimentary medical exam and the driver was waiting for Jay to get there to exchange apologies before leaving. Jay hadn’t had anything to say and the guy had gotten into his Le Sabre and waved like he’d enjoyed the visit. Anne had said on the way back to the house, What were you, asleep? and he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of being underwater until hours later, watching television.

  BEHIND HIM ANNE SURFED channels in frustration with her remote, and Billy said, “Ma. Leave it on one.” Jay eased past the dog asleep on the floor in the kitchen. He opened the door softly. The dog was immediately on its feet but too late to get to the door. It stood with its front paws on the windowsill, backlit by the kitchen light. Jay stretched in the driveway, rubbing his forearms against the chill. August, and the nights were already cool. He left the dog panting silently behind the glass and crossed the yard to the street, conjuring up Anne’s face in the light of the television. He was away from the lights of his house quickly, and then he left the streetlights, off-white and quiet, behind him as well.

  The lights receded and the darkness and quiet increased. His street was a dead end. He was heading for the fence on the grassy bluff beyond the pavement, and for the airport beyond the fence.

  THEY HAD AN ARRANGEMENT for Thursday nights: he got to see his shows, Anne got to see hers, and Billy got to see his. The times lined up. They had a VCR but only used it for rental movies. On other nights when shows competed, Jay sometimes stuck it out and sometimes didn’t. When he didn’t he sat by the window in the kitchen with the lights out. Anne would say to Billy, “Your father’s in there communing with the darkness.”

  THE SIEBERTS’ DOG, an Irish setter/beagle mix, barked at the rattle of the chain link every time Jay reached the fence, and kept barking until he slid underneath it and got down to the base of the bluffs. He tried not to let the dog hurry him, picking his way through the brambles and fallen birches in the moonlight. He was off his usual path—here was some splintered and ragged sumac, where he expected a small clearing—but it was no problem; he knew his way around.

  BILLY WAS NINE and Theophilus was four and Anne was thirty-five, and Jay spent as much time as he could with them, watching. They were all happy. When he thought of his family he thought of the dog snuffing under the azalea, sprinting in bursts after squirrels and birds, barking and leaping splay-legged at the tennis ball. Anne was happy. She loved her job and concentrated on it at home in a knit-browed, serious way that he admired; she loved her books, her cooking, her landscaping. Billy was happy. He had his father and mother and Theo. Theo was happy. Everybody was happy.

  AS HE EXPECTED, once on the bottom, at runway level, he had no problems. He headed for the four red threshold lights spanning diagonally away from him. He kept an eye out for security vehicles. He moved through the high groundcover the way he moved through his own darkened house. He found the huge chevrons of the overrun area, and then his feet were on the landing threshold and the hard surface of the runway itself.

  He stood between the central red lights. They seemed attentive, obedient and waiting. He crossed to one and held his hand over it, the red glowing up through his skin and between his fingers, creating a pleasing, instant X-ray. He held on to the thick, warm glass and leaned back, squeezing, staring out into the darkness and stars in the direction of the approach pattern of the planes.

  He pulled away from the lights, finally, moving toward the center of the runway, the circling beam of the tower in the distance calming him. He crossed the nonpr
ecision approach markings, great, white parallel squares, and stood over the sweeping number of the runway designation. The number was twenty-eight. It was probably the compass bearing, as well. He sat down. He turned back to the four red lights, still silent and waiting. Then he lay back, spread-eagle, and looked up into the darkness.

  It wasn’t long before he heard the first plane. It was a light, far-off buzzing, starting out beyond his left arm and circling quietly, slowly, around him until it was coming, harder and louder, from below his heels. He told himself he wouldn’t look, he’d keep his eyes straight up, but when it got so loud it seemed already on him he jerked his head up, his chin hitting his chest, and caught the landing lights full in the face. They passed over him in an instant, streaking up the runway far ahead of the plane, leaving him momentarily blinded, but everything reappeared immediately, and right overhead swinging toward him like a great pendulum were the red and white running lights, spread out unevenly in a line and gleaming on the smooth underside of the wings and fuselage, the wheels swaying low beneath them. He rolled, face pressed against the pavement, as the noise rushed over him in a wave, shaking him, and was gone.

  He rose to his elbows and lay on his belly, watching the plane skirt into the darkness, the lights slowly joining the concentration of lights around the tower.

  He marked the spot in his mind and computed how far into the runway the next spot should be. Then he left, heading for the bluff at a good speed, because the airport security wasn’t that bad.

  THERE WAS NO PATTERN to the runway visits. He varied their frequency to baffle airport security. He was certainly reported each time by the incoming pilot. Sometimes he waited as much as three months to go out, watching the security jeeps on their rounds through the chain-link fence at the end of the street. Sometimes he went as often as once a week. This week he was going twice: Thursday and Saturday.