by Rick Bass
Stars; a crescent moon. A heron flew downriver, its wing beats unheard over the throb of the motor. The silhouette of the slender cable above them—their tether—trembled like a fishing line.
The barge was tilted—one side sucked slightly down into the upstream current, and the opposite side pitched up—and was without a railing. Yet all around them, the woman’s children rolled and tumbled like puppies. One of them, a boy, climbed up onto the hood and peered inside at them, made silly google eyes. Nasty boys, Wilson thought. Damn, I was lucky.
A warm breeze blew through their open windows. Beside them, the ferrywoman lit a cigarette, watched the ferry’s progress, and leaned in Belinda’s window. Like a winged harpy, another of her boys leapt from out of the darkness and onto her back, fastening himself to her. A few sparks from her cigarette jarred upward, but other than that, she seemed not to notice.
She told Belinda, “You can get out, if you want.”
They stepped from their car. Wilson held each girl’s hand too tightly—they wriggled in his grip, accustomed to it and resisting it at once. With the caution of horses going onto a frozen pond, the four of them walked to the bow of the barge to look out at the moon, and at the darker line of the shore toward which they strove. Wilson’s head filled with images of how, if a sunken log, current-driven, jarred against the barge, the girls could be pulled from his grip and spill into the big river. He marveled again that there was no railing.
And yet: the air was delicious, a true wind now. Belinda’s and the girls’ hair swirled and clung to their faces. Wilson had never experienced a power like the current beneath them. He felt it, electric, through the iron boat. Still gripping the girls’ hands ferociously, he turned to kiss Belinda. She smiled at him, but stepped back then, somehow nervous. Or was it more than that?
The engine struggled—missing but never quitting. Midriver, the sagging cable keeping them on track seemed more insubstantial than ever.
The ferrywoman joined them out on the bow.
“Are all those yours?” Belinda asked.
How do they know not to leap in? Wilson wondered.
The ferrywoman’s cigarette glowed brighter. “Yep,” she said. There was neither pride nor exhaustion in the statement.
“Does this thing ever break?” Wilson asked, pointing to the cable. Imagining the swirling ride downstream, spinning in teacup circles.
“It never has, for me, yet,” she said. Wilson noticed that she spoke in commas, as if accustomed to a life of rowing. “It did, once, to the woman before me,” she said.
That might have been the place, Wilson thinks, deep into his excavation, a continent away from the land of his heart. How tightly he’d held on to the girls’ hands, and how fitting and proper it had been to do so. They had been little, back then, mountain girls who knew nothing of big rivers. It had been terrifying but exhilarating, and after they reached the far shore and paid the ferrywoman, they continued through the black night of the prairie with the windows rolled down, the air washing over their arms and the afterglow of the experience illuminating their blood, as if with an effervescence.
But they had continued on, deeper into the night, and he had not changed.
In a light rain, Wilson and the girls visited another ruination. It was an outdoor shrine, one of the largest in Peru—out in a broad and green valley, with hewn boulders so immense they radiated their own life force and gravity.
The Incas had believed the stones possessed their own wills. Their new guide, a clean-shaven Peruvian who had studied history at Purdue not so long ago, told them that the outline of the boulders, which wandered the meadow in sinuous fashion, was actually arranged to form the perfect shape of a mountain lion. The anatomy was precise, with each bone-to-body ratio exact. The stone puma was half a mile long.
“You can see it from outer space,” the guide said, “but here on the ground, you can see none of it.” He cast his hand toward the horizon. “There are no mountains high enough to give a clear view of this structure. How did they get it perfect? It is a mystery. You cannot see it. You cannot know it.”
The guide seemed to descend then, to the bottom of a cool, deep well within himself, dwelling there for a moment or two before reemerging with a slightly different, more compassionate bearing—and Wilson thought, I could have a drink with this fellow. A man with two countries, two continents.
The guide, having kicked back upward from his brief introspection—like a conch diver rising to the shimmer of light above—looked at his clients now with tenderness. “Do you think this structure was built during a time of war,” he asked, “or a time of peace?”
“War,” said a middle-aged British man; his son, a round behemoth, nodded in agreement. There was no doubt about it, and like the cheepings of birds, the word war, war, rose now from the lips of many, a staggered, murmuring assent.
The guide, serene from the place he had visited moments ago, shook his head.
“I myself think it must have been a time of great peace,” he said. “Such care and attention could not have been possible during the strife of war. No. I think the puma was built as an offering to the Inca god, and to say to all, Look at how powerful we are, do not attack us.
“It took fifty years to build,” the guide said.
The rain was coming down harder, and the tour-goers pressed in closer against one of the puma’s boulders, having no idea whether it was a haunch, paw, or neck, seeking only respite from the cold rain; but there was no protection.
Vendors appeared, selling plastic ponchos and plastic puma key chains. Stephanie bought a key chain and handed it to Wilson. “Not as fierce as our Montana lions,” she said, and laughed. How much she looked like her mother when she laughed.
Another vendor, clad in a metallic sandwich board—an aluminum beer keg cut in half and wrapped around him—waddled toward them with a hissing propane stove attached to the improvised metal jacket, which possessed various nozzles for the dispensing of hot water, cocoa, or coffee.
The apparatus steamed in the mist. The vendor carried paper cups and a change pouch. The silver keg looked not unlike the armor conquistadores had worn in their malicious advance centuries earlier, and Wilson bought the girls hot cocoa, and a coffee for himself, and nearly wept at the injustice that there was no brandy, no rum, no anything, just lukewarm coffee and cold rain.
The guide was still talking. “Fifty years and twenty thousand workers,” he said. “It would have taken one man a million years to build this. But working together, they did it in fifty. Each man wanted to build something that would last forever. Which they did. You are standing in it,” the guide said. “You are in the remnants of greatness.”
That afternoon, in Lima, they went to a large outdoor market. They stopped on the way to watch a military celebration on a great lawn, some kind of anniversary, rows of horses in military dress and men in heavy wool uniforms sweating in the bright equatorial sun, bedecked with guns and swords, their leather boots creaking. A general came out onto a third-story balcony and spoke to the throng, his words unintelligible and strident. The horses were sweating too, their legs and chests laced with thick veins. Wilson and the girls walked on, away from the megaphonic soundscape of the shouting general.
The market was crowded, tables jammed up against one another, overflowing—birdcages, woven shawls, wallets and purses, wooden carvings. The girls, rather than seeking curios for themselves, collaborated on a purchase for Wilson: a pair of handmade leather dress shoes, a fawn color, soft and delicate, only ten dollars, and a well-tailored blazer to match, the same amount. What does a logger need with these things? he wondered, and then had a chilling thought: Maybe they think I won’t recover. Maybe they’re picturing a second part of my life, one where I’m no longer in the woods.
Back home, such luxuries were unthinkable—he would never have purchased these things for himself—and he felt a catch in his throat and his eyes mist.
They like me the way I am, he thought, but maybe they j
ust want me to look a little better. He examined the beautiful jacket and could not imagine ever wearing it, but touched the clean new fabric, beheld it as he might the raiment of a king.
The rush of traffic and jackhammer clatter of Lima agitated Wilson. But at the Hotel Ajo there was an extravagant garden in the lobby, an atrium of orchids, bromeliads, and birds of paradise, along with dining tables set next to splashing fountains—a great calmness, like that of a greenhouse. It was here that Wilson devised a plan. He would lie awake as the girls fell asleep, waiting until around one a.m., when he would go downstairs and out on the town to find a drink—just one, or maybe two—and then return to the room, brush his teeth, and change out of the clothes in which he had taken the drinks. Not that he would spill anything, he was not that kind of drinker, but the girls would be able to smell the sharp fumes of vodka clinging to the fibers of his shirt, or the oaty scent of beer. After changing out of his clothes, he would sleep until seven or eight, ready to begin the day.
It was workable, he decided. It would not take him away from his daughters. It would not take him away from anything. It was a simple solution and there were plenty of hours in the day.
Damn it, he thought, walking out the door barefooted, carrying his sandals in his hand. It had all gone by too fast. Now would come college, then jobs; boyfriends, husbands, children, grandchildren. He could feel the last of it falling away.
The hotel was at the edge of an upscale suburb, but, as seemed so often the case to him down here, the rich existed shoulder to shoulder with the less fortunate. By turning away from the glow of town and toward the darkness, he would be able to find what he was looking for soon enough.
He walked, alert, looking for a light, any light. The bars he passed were all closed; the streets were narrow and uneven. He felt extraordinarily sober but intended to change that. A cat dashed across the street in front of him, then stopped and looked back, as though believing, briefly, that Wilson might have something for it.
At last he came to a building where he could smell alcohol, could hear bar sounds: voices and the delicate clink of glasses and bottles. As if he had prayed the place into existence. But it didn’t seem like a real bar; instead, it was simply a large room with a low-leaning adobe doorway where, inside, some people were drinking. Definitely not a tourist haunt, just a local drinking room. Was an invitation necessary? He hoped not.
He stepped inside: dark, with a dirt floor. Three haggard old men sat at the bar—more of a long, high table—drinking slowly, heroically, so drunk that it took great effort and willpower for them even to lift their mugs, which they did from time to time.
All manner of local characters were present. Wilson had barely gotten his first drink before a man sidled up and, with no explanation, took a deep breath and then sat there, quivering and turning blue, for long moments that melted, unbelievably, as if into years, until the man finally gasped, and sucked in a double lungful of what surely was the sweetest-tasting air imaginable.
Once he had regained his composure, the man explained that he was an ex–conch diver who, long ago, had been able to hold his breath for five minutes. Although he could no longer go quite that long, it was a tradition, he said, that any time he held his breath for three minutes the recipient of this demonstration had to buy him a beer. Wilson obliged.
There were others in the strange room: a man who said he used to be a sword swallower; an old gaucho with holes in his dusty boots, through which the tips of his battered toes protruded; and another fellow who claimed to be an ex-general. The house specialty was a dark rum drink served from a large clay urn with bright wedges of lime floating in the top of it.
No Americans, which made Wilson comfortable. How wonderful for this late-night stroll to have brought him an authentic, nontourist experience, and how very much his drinking had come in handy here, helping him to achieve it, and to be accepted—welcomed even!
A lady appeared, an American he thought at first, but no, Argentinean born and raised, it turned out, black eyes, smile as wide as an alligator’s. She was luminous in the darkness, wearing a simple bright yellow sundress, and her skin was dark, though as she drew closer he saw how sun-damaged it was. She sat down on the stool next to him and held his arm, speaking to him in accented English. Her facial expressions were extravagant—the lift of her eyebrows, the pursing of her lips—and labored, as if in slow motion.
She had a blue-sequined box with a strap on it, like a case made to carry an accordion but with breathing holes punched into it, and she said the box was full of guinea pigs. Wilson had not yet mentioned his daughters, but she urged him to buy one, to buy more, one for each of his children. She too was drinking the dark rum from the urn, and offered to help name the guinea pigs, if he would buy them.
He guessed the woman to be in her midfifties. She still possessed a haggard allure, but the aura of shipwreck was strong upon her now. Her silvering hair was lovely, and when she smiled, her lined face was festive, promising a great merriment to which she must once have been accustomed. Yet the instant she stopped smiling, it seemed that she was sinking, and no one cared any longer to hazard a rescue.
Wilson felt a compassion for her, a surprising bond of intimacy. And as they drank and talked, he came to understand that she could see inside his own fall. That she understood his love for his daughters, his distress at his family’s ongoing dissolution, and the widening gyre of his daughters’ growing-up lives. The dawn of his own physical diminishment—he who had once been nothing but physical. Maybe, he thought, they could hold each other up for a night, and he reached out and put his hand on her arm, just to see how she would take it; and she smiled at him.
This was how it had been in the rough bars and logging camps of his youth, he remembered. Long nights of great fun and nothingness, an unending scroll of meaningless encounters. Now he had nothing again. A loneliness greater than the sum of its empty parts.
He knew he was leaning on his girls like a drunken sailor, and they knew it too. He understood, briefly, during one of the drinks, that he needed to lighten up and let them go.
In an effort to stir more drink-buying, the bartender turned on a staticky radio. Wilson and the guinea-pig woman danced. He was having fun now, he thought, but with the terror of a greater loneliness yet. The small of the woman’s back in his hand felt like an animal that might bolt, or charge him. He wanted to get home to his girls, but kept waltzing. Finally he leaned in and rested against the woman. It would take thirty, forty years to come to know her fully. The idea astounded him. He needed to get back to the girls before they were gone.
When the dance was done, Wilson had three more rum-and-lime drinks—drank them until after they had lost their limey, fizzy luster. The conch diver had long ago fallen asleep at his table, though in his sleep he had a troubling cough.
The guinea-pig woman had a million stories, as he’d known she would: as if she were composed of stories. Her fatigue seemed to elicit them. They came flowing from her now, as though they were the essence of her sleep, and her dreams. She loved animals. She had run a zoo, she said, where she lay down to sleep with the elephants. She stretched a long, languorous arm toward him, and he noticed a jagged scar on the inside of her elbow. She leaned closer against Wilson and laid her head on his shoulder. There were more stories. She had worked on a sailboat in the Galápagos, taking people out to swim with dolphins and even whale sharks, whose spots, she said, look like the lights of cities sunk to the bottom of the sea.
She looked down at her scar, massaged it as if with great affection. “But I have a dark side too,” she said. “I have spent time in jail.” She said this as if she had nothing to do with it, and was as puzzled by it as she would be by an unexpected turn in the weather.
Wilson did not betray his surprise. “Well, a lot of people have,” he said, “at least for a day or two.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.” He started to ask why but sensed, even in his growing inebriation, that if she wanted him to know, she would
have told him; and he imagined that if he was patient, he would find out soon enough.
“I must be a dangerous woman,” she said, her head still on his shoulder.
He glanced down at her and smiled. She looked up then, and he touched her cheek. She was no longer young but it still felt good to Wilson for someone to care enough to make up such stories. He ordered yet another drink.
The woman looked over toward one of the room’s dark corners, where a large man was watching them unhappily. “He does not like you,” she said. “He does not like us talking.”
Wilson asked if she wanted another drink but she said no, that she was done. She sat with him while he finished his and told him a convoluted tale of family—sisters and bad husbands, wronged and complicated women, harsh circumstances, strife. Wilson tuned out the second half of it as he had been doing with the tour guides—his endurance for almost everything was gone—and then the woman was saying that the story had made her sad, that she was going outside to clear her mind of such things. She asked if Wilson wanted to join her.
He was surprised to realize that he did not want to go any further. He was hammered, and ready to call it an evening, but walked out with her to say good night.
Outside, she lit a cigarette and drifted away from the weak light in front of the drinking room. She seemed lost, still troubled by the last story she had told. She stopped in front of a hedge with large pink blossoms that seemed to glow in the darkness. Their scent was sweet, like too much perfume, almost overpowering. The tip of her cigarette glowed, and she was visible only in dim silhouette.
After a minute she turned toward him and nodded, as though finally coming out of her funk. As he walked toward her, someone tapped him on the shoulder.
It was the big man from the bar, disturbingly close—he smelled like a dog in need of a bath, and was angry. Wilson understood he was about to be struck, but before the big man could hit him, the guinea-pig woman’s face loomed in front of him, leering now.