by Rick Bass
In my seventeenth year, during my frequent and unexcused absences from “The Home,” I traveled to New York by rail to hie into the wilderness and search for traces and remnants of this spectacle. Imagine my pleasure, to a large degree almost sexual, when I discovered not only scraps of that decimated village, but that in the near vicinity there was still ongoing drilling activity, only sixty years later, as if the workings and desires of man were as mindless as those of ants: laborers probing still to reach into the same reservoirs that had so resolutely destroyed their predecessors.
I stayed there two weeks during the drilling of one of these wells. Other pump jacks were already in activity all around the reconstructed village, which had foolishly been given the same name as the previous hamlet.
During the drilling of the well—accomplished via a great pounding and sledging of the earth, which made the very skin of the ground tremble, and which excited me greatly—a stream of salty brine was intercepted at about six hundred feet, and then another immense reservoir of gas was struck. The gas ejected the old ocean with great violence.
It was harsh winter-time, and the water soon covered the derrick with ice, forming a glistening frozen chimney sixty feet in height. Through this the water was thrown, at intervals of about one minute, to double that height. After that came another great rush of gas, which continued until the pressure below was relieved, when the water once more began to accumulate, and was again ejected. When the derrick was covered with ice, the gas escaping from the well was frequently ignited, and the effect, especially at night, of this fountain of mingled fire and water, shooting up to the height of one hundred and twenty feet, through a great transparent and illuminated ice chimney, was indescribably magnificent.
I next visited the site in 1917. A two-inch gas pipe had been fixed in the orifice of the well, and the gas was still escaping with a power and volume that were startling. The sound could be heard for a mile. The pressure was two hundred and sixty-two pounds to the square inch, as reported by Mr. Peter Neff. The ignited jet formed aflame twenty feet in length, as large around as a hogshead. The supply of gas here was sufficient to illuminate a large city. Imagine a volcano.
Ten years afterward, personal information from Mr. Neff assured me that these wells continued to “blow,” and from the gas he was manufacturing a refined quality of lampblack.
More wells were drilled; more subterranean writhings, resistance, turmoil encountered. In 1918 a well eight miles southeast of the new village, at the depth of one hundred and fifty feet, reached confined gas which threw tools into the air. It is said that much sand escaped, and a stone weighting “several” pounds was thrown over a bam “forty rods distant.” That well was subsequently filled with cement, after the high pressure of the gas had subsided.
In 1919, at a place five miles northeast of the same doomed village, a well bored one hundred feet deep secured a supply of gas which was used thereafter for many years for illuminating purposes, rendering a quaint gaslight appearance upon the whole community of an evening. Subsequent powerful explosions south of the village however revealed the uncovering of other uncontrollable gas reservoirs in 1920. Religious proctors believed that hell had opened up and that the end of the world was two days nigh.
After burning wild for two years and scorching everything in a halfmile radius to pure black, the earth’s internal hell fire subsided enough that two relief wells were able to be probed at its flanks, though now the pernicious flames leapt uncontrolled from those fissures as well, so that the united illumination rendered newspaper print visible at night in town, even at the distance of three miles.
Eventually the wells began to hurl fresh water rather than fire into the sky, and in this manner extinguished themselves, converting the surrounding landscape to a horrific sodden paste of ash and mud, though two years later there grew across that mile’s expanse the most vibrant field of emerald-colored grass, calm and level and serene, obscuring completely all traces of the terror of the year before, save for the slightest hint of sulphur.
Four miles west of town, in a copse known as Crab Orchard, a burning spring later appeared, unsolicited and unsummoned. This freshwater spring is in a constant state of ebullition from the escape of its gas. The water is sweet to drink but the odor of the gas riding above the water’s surface is hot and fetid, like the tongue-breath of some horrid monster hovering hidden over the source of the spring.
“Regularly every day,” reported the late J. F. Henry, “between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, the spring overflows; a large quantity of gas is liberated, and, as if struck by the sparks of friction of some revolving gear- and cog-works below, self-ignites, with the resultant flames spewing merrily and untended for between four and five hours, on into the night, before fading. In winter, wild animals—deer and rabbits—sometimes gather around the flames for warmth, where hunters will hide in wait and then ambush them as these denizens warm themselves before the fires. Many such hunter encampments are situated around the burning spring, and the hunters will clean the animals and cook them over the very flames which moments before had provided pleasure and warmth.”
Year and year again I returned to New Fredonia, learning what I could of the earth’s trade. Standing on one prominent ridge top, I could see, on a dark night, the lights from all the various wells being flared, in addition to the burning spring, as well as the rogue fire-tongues of explosions where the earth was splitting and rupturing open unbidden. Well after well, roarers and gushers—elegant tongues of flame throughout the forest, and patchy brush fires burning here and there, so that I very much could have been gazing, from safe vantage, down into one of the suffering villages of hell.
One well in particular, visible to the south, was the most remarkable. It furnished light and fuel to all the vicinity, including the adjacent village of Saint Joe. It was situated in a valley surrounded by high mountains, which reflected and concentrated the light of the ignited gas flares. Many conduits started from the well; one led the gas directly to the cylinder of a strong motor, which, by its pressure, acquired a prodigious velocity. Another pipe fed aflame capable of reducing, it is said, as much iron ore as half the furnaces of Pittsburgh. This motor however drove nothing, merely spun and roared as if for exhibition, or like a caged animal trapped above earth’s surface.
Fire to steel! I wanted into this power as much as I have ever wanted to foist between any woman’s two legs.
I perceive that the world will split open in the coming years because of this: that mankind will blossom like some wonderful scented rose. It is not possible to imagine how sated our desires may be fulfilled with this luxury, nor the consequences to our character: only that good times, and peace, and a deeper and further integrity await us.
Unfortunately, Fredonia is no more. There were for a while ten iron and steel mills in the vicinity using the gas in their puddling furnaces and under their boilers; a dozen more were making arrangements for its introduction, and many other manufacturing firms had begun laying lines into the fissure. There were six glass-blowing factories in the vicinity, and every brewer in the county was tied in to the lines. Two of the largest hotels used it exclusively for cooking purposes. For general purposes, the town of Fredonia, until it burned and vanished to char and reek, had no rival for cheapness, cleanliness, modernity, and convenience of application.
Once more however the reservoirs, once cracked into, ruptured openly thereafter and swallowed in fire all traces of the town. A wilderness stands there now: tangles of briar and maple, jack pine and currant bush. Peace atop, though bilious gas even now lurks beneath its skin.
Until this golden dawn at which we now stand, our modern forests have been the chief producers of fuel in human times, via firewood. Now another tree need never be cut, save for an occasional home, should our country desire to expand, each according to our own biological imperatives to breed.
The sea supports a vast amount of vegetation; but we have not learned how to apply it to the p
roduction of heat. Strange as it seems, the sea weeds that waved their graceful fronds in the oceans of millions of years ago are smelting the iron for the pipes destined to bring their transformed constituents to the sites of gigantic industries and warming the dwellings of the populations which conduct them. Seaweed to iron; man to God.
Will these marvelous supplies hold out? That is the question which the owners of the millions invested are anxiously asking. Probably, as had been proved with petroleum, particular wells will gradually diminish in supply; many will cease to yield; some will continue indefinitely. But probably also new supplies will be discovered, and increasing demands will be met for many years in the future. I, and a few others like me, will not be denied.
Once again Wallis was troubled by the difficulty he had separating the knowledge he was gaining of the buried earth, in reading the old journals, from the knowledge he was gaining about Old Dudley. “What ‘home?’” he asked Mel one night. “It says here he was in a ‘home.’ I thought he grew up with his parents.”
“Well, there was some trouble when he was a little older,” Mel said.
“At what age?” Wallis asked. “Fourteen, fifteen? Wait, let me guess—when his testicles dropped?”
Mel smiled, but only slightly. “It wasn’t real good.” That was all she would say.
They weren’t sleeping with each other, weren’t touching each other—but they were traveling nonetheless into that country, as if laying down stones for the crossing of a shallow river. Mel thought ahead to the days when they might be across that river, and holding each other, and loving. She was in no real hurry to get there, and she kept looking back, too—but in her mind, sometimes she was already in the shallows with Wallis, the two of them laying down flat rocks for a crossing—working seemingly without purpose or goal: working only in the moment, is how Mel imagined it, with the sun warm on their backs, and the sound of riffling water, and the lulling sound of stones clacking together.
She followed the wolves backward—continuing to try to keep her heart light, and to resurrect wonder each day; and each time, once she was in the woods, the wonder returned. It was only in the winter stillness in bed at night that she questioned her worth, her life. Some nights she would wonder if the dissettlement was about children versus no children; but she had come to the conclusion that that wasn’t the source; that it was deeper, simpler: that the brightness of her solitude was simply losing its luster. That the distance between being alone versus lonely was narrowing. That the line might even have already been crossed somewhere further back, unbeknownst to her.
The alpha male and female were pair bonding—beginning their preliminary courtship. She examined their scent markings. There was not yet blood in the female’s urine, but the weave of their trails was beginning to travel closer together.
Some afternoons she would tire of following the tracks—following them in the wrong direction, is what it felt like, and knowing so well the story she would find at day’s end: the tangled, picked-clean bones of yet another deer—and instead she would sit for hours at a time, sometimes making small wreaths from the wind-broken boughs and branches of fir, cedar, hemlock, and spruce—spending a whole afternoon weaving such a creation, only to hang it in a tree twenty miles from the nearest human. Other times she would sit and rest as if waiting for a thing to catch up, though she would feel confused, not knowing for certain whether that thing was behind her, or in front.
Never before had she been unsure of anything in the woods.
They went to the bar together more often, as winter sank deeper and the snows piled higher. People noticed their new comfort with each other—the friendship—but only Helen was made wary by it. The others seemed to accept the change as they would another cycle of the seasons. Those who bothered to consider the friendship understood that even if romance blossomed, Matthew would return, and he would win Mel back when he came.
Most of them, however, gave it no thought. Matthew was in Houston, as incapable of being betrayed as story or legend.
Wallis was settling in, however, as if building a nest. He studied the pictures on the wall, in the bar; he listened, asked questions. He felt the grain of forest growing slowly around him, even in winter. He listened to stories being told, and when he went back home, it felt as if those stories were walls—that a structure was being built with them—a thing which might contain him, then alter him.
One late night—New Year’s Eve, though Mel and Wallis hadn’t known that when they set out on skis for the bar—long after most everyone had gone home or had passed out in front of the stove, curled up with elk and deer hides wrapped around them—Wallis asked Artie how he ended up in the valley.
Artie looked surprised, then slightly confused. Though he was only in his late forties, it had been so long ago that he viewed that other time as he would another person or another life—as if it were in no way any longer connected to him.
“I had a good job in Oklahoma, as a sheriff’s deputy, but then my wife left me—went off with another man—a fella I had arrested on a number of occasions. They took my two kids with ’em, took my car, money, dogs. I figured I was going to go crazy—that I’d either turn to drinking, or drugs, or some kind of lowlife—and so I just ran.” He smiled sadly. “Man, I was angry,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t believe how angry I was. I just took off running, to keep from hurting myself or anyone else.
“I came over the pass here in late August. It was like some kind of religious experience. I felt everything else just fall away.” Artie’s eyes teared now, and he brushed at his eyes, surprised by the emotion. “I don’t know why. Man, it felt good.” He stared at his beer glass. “That was a long time ago,” he said.
“You drink now,” Wallis noted—as if Artie were perhaps not aware of it—and Artie smiled.
“Yeah, I drink a lot. But I drink because I’m happy,” he said. “Not because I’m sad or angry, or because I have to. I could quit at any time.”
There was a silence after that, in which they could all hear the ragged chorus of snores, dog and human, coming from near the stove. The fire shifted, collapsed on itself within, then flamed anew, nourished by the stir of oxygen.
“I didn’t know you had any children,” Mel said.
“It was a long time ago,” Artie said. “I haven’t seen them since last I heard they were living in Kansas. Their mama moved back to Georgia to be with her folks. Shit, I guess she’s getting pretty close to being an old woman now. Her old mama and daddy might not even be alive anymore.”
“How old are your children?” Mel asked.
Artie looked up at the ceiling and tried to do the math. “Twenty-five? No, close to thirty, I guess. Still kids, anyway,” he said.
“What about you, Charlie?” Wallis asked. The big man had been sitting quietly, his pale, hammy arms crossed over his chest, listening.
He shrugged. “It was different for me,” he said. “I just came. But it was like Artie says: the minute I saw the valley, I felt something different. It was like something stopped inside me and got real still.” And that was all he had to say on it.
Party favors—tinsel hats, noisemakers, confetti—lay scattered on the floor. Mel had had her one beer early in the evening, but then had allowed herself a glass of champagne, which rested before her half-full, though void of fizz.
Amy had been knitting all evening—sitting quietly during the music and dancing, knitting ceaselessly on a baby blanket, though no babies were known to be expected or imminent—but now she said to Mel, “He says that he is going to join the church—that he wants to join my church.”
At first Mel did not know who Amy was talking about—she thought perhaps she meant Charlie—but then she understood.
“Oh, Amy,” she said, “I don’t think so.” She almost reached out to pat Amy’s hand. “Sometimes he just says things like that. Mother wanted him to go to church when I was growing up, and he never would. He—” Mel paused. “I don’t think I’d count on it.�
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Amy picked up her knitting again. “I’m going to hold him to it,” she said calmly.
“What lies to the north?” Colter asked Mel. He had fallen asleep during the adults’ discussions, but was awake now. He asked it like a riddle. “What’s over the mountains?” he asked her. “How far north and west would you have to go to see salmon again?”
Mel considered this, much as Artie had tried to recall the ages of his children. “Several hundred miles,” she said. “Five, maybe six hundred. Are you thinking of taking a trip?”
“I want to see salmon,” Colter said. “They were here when my father was my age. I’d like to see them.”
Time versus distance, Mel thought. Did thirty years equal five hundred miles?
“Swans, too,” Colter said. “The tundra swans. I want to see them.”
She started to tell him he should be grateful for what was still here—the wolves and grizzlies, eagles and wolverines. The caribou and owls.
“I know it’s nice here,” Colter said, “but it’s too tame. I want to see a place that’s like what this place was like when my father was my age.”