Back to the Garden

by Clara Hume

  I'm sure the feeling of loss had triggered my memory-dream. I recalled promising skies and lively schoolyards. I thought of how things used to be—the fleeting and trite angst of youth: which lunchbox was cooler, how to get rid of a pimple, how to toss a Frisbee, and was our math teacher, Mr. Tidd, cute or what? I remember how Fran and I had wept together on that mountain that day as we discussed the old world. And when I woke up from the dream, I broke down in bed by myself. Daniel was still asleep. So were the twins.

  My vague thoughts drifted back to the first part of my dream, when Miss Massa told us about commodities trading back in the old days, and how things like wheat and oil were hoarded and controlled. I couldn't imagine that kind of stuff now. These days it was every man for himself. Governments had fallen, and corporations had vanished. Every man, on his own, had already overcome organized military states, and was currently, as we figured, beating down rogue attempts. No central authority could survive without our world's previous infrastructure of energy and communication.

  On our mountain we used solar power for a few things like our walkies, and we had enough bio-fuel to get down the mountain, but we'd heard from occasional drifters that the world had also gone off the grid. We tried to preserve ourselves, and if a passerby happened to be drifting through we would give him a letter to relay to another area in hopes our recipient would eventually get our news.

  The tipping point came a few decades after the resource wars began, which we had talked about in high school as we tried to understand how our world had ever become this way. The great divide began like a river parting its way through the world decades ago, with the rich on one side and the poor on the other. On one side was a narrow strip of paradise and the other a deep hell.

  Along with economic collapse, the planet also became sick—as rivers dried up, fresh and clean water was hard to come by, diseases became rampant, crops and energy resources became scarce, sea ice melted, storms and droughts became more intense—and the ruling elite, we heard, went into subterranean bunkers or simply dissipated.

  I still imagined rich castles under the ground, safe from bombs, well-stocked with bins of grains and dried meats, water, oil, good books, and plenty of weed. I don't know about you, but me, well, when there's little order in the world, you just hide out where you are. It is like this for me, for us on the mountain. We are the fortunate ones when it comes to having a small pocket of contained land and water with still healthy chickens, fish, sheep, and plants. It's hard work, though, and it's getting tougher each year. So far, we have stayed where we're at, except for Fran's mom, my dad, and Johnny. It is hard still to imagine going elsewhere down that road.

  Memories dripped into dream. It was during Miss Massa's class again, and we were gazing out the window to a spring day that promised warm winds and new buds after another cozy winter up on the mountain. The wonderful scents of peach blossoms and lilies planted out in the school yard filled our senses. I could smell that telltale breath of newness, of birth, as sweet as a newborn's aroma. Everything I ever associated with spring was a mix of rich earth, blossoms, rain, and sunshine.

  In my dream, we decided to leave class while Miss Massa said something about futures. We walked straight down the plum-tiled corridor to a pair of glass doors at the end of the building, and beyond those doors was so much sunlight it was hard on the eyes—the kind of light at the end of the tunnel people describe when dying temporarily. We walked out the door and sat on the curb outside the school, near a bike rack.

  The peaks of the Selkirk Mountains were white with snow, and the stark contrast of that brightness touching a very blue sky was such a treat for my eyes, such that I couldn't stop staring, and neither could Fran. She had her legs stretched out. They were thin but shapely and already getting tan. Her golden-honey hair whipped about in the breeze. She wore a white cardigan over a simple light blue dress. Fran, my best friend, was always unaware of her beauty. Being near her had always warmed my heart. They call that "eye candy," I guess. I found her pleasant and uplifting to watch and be near.

  Even back then, we were seeing death and decay around the world in quantities not imagined from even a decade before when already the world had gone downhill so much it was either ignored—all the poverty and hardships—or it was simply impossible to keep up with the reality of it all. But then was nothing like now. In my dream, we watched the sky and talked about the changes in the world.

  During our conversation, I woke up feeling very disoriented. I felt fuzzy, tasted my dry mouth, and groaned. I had to pee badly. But I couldn't open my eyes and kept trying to find that synapse back to the dream again. Back to where I wanted to be. In a world that still held some promise, in which Fran and I tried to have all the hope in the world. It’s not that we lost it completely. It’s more like we became lost, and the new world we emerged into felt haunted by old spirits.

  I was too weak to stay awake, and sure enough I fell asleep again, but this time I dreamed about my father, who had left with Barbara, Fran's mother. The dream wasn't a dream precisely, but the fuzzy re-enactment of a memory that had occurred when I was young, when my mother died of the flu. Until that point in time, our family had had healthy relationships and ambitions. My father Willy was Fran's dad's main assistant on the ranch. They had known each other from when their fathers drove cattle on Wild Mountain's vast meadows—but when their fathers died off, Alej and my father noticed the turbulence and ecological devastation not only on our mountain but in the rest of the world, and decided that raising beef cows wasn't helping the land or their families. Dad and Alej made changes based upon their assessment of stream, soil, and wildlife quality on our mountain, and they jokingly drew up new "laws."

  Dad and Alej were serious about some things. Foremost, they would stop raising large herds of cattle and raise a few sheep instead. Second, they would create a permaculture crop area using newer methods of irrigation and planting to ensure that energy wasn't being wasted. Third, the mountain was a territory, they said, and just as with bears or wolves, there was a maximum number of humans who could live sustainably on the mountain. They wanted to study that. But it never went far. More than half the people on our land died from Dengue or Avian flu strains—and many others left for cities where they felt safer. My father took me aside one day and said, "That feeling of security is a delusion. We're better off staying up here on the mountain." How ironic his words now, I thought, now that he had upped and left.

  Mama died in bed from the flu. My dad was devastated and held an all-night wake, where he sipped whiskey and talked to nobody. His stony-faced acquiescence marked the end of an era of familial happiness and the beginning of his years-long passage into the distance. He no longer took me aside to tell me interesting tidbits about life. He was no longer warm to me, but idly civil. He never left his obligations, only his love of life. And I missed him terribly.

  When Barbara left the mountain with Dad, I felt homeless, even though I had Daniel here, our lovely twins, and a physical space around us that we called home.

  My dreams had recalled nostalgic hope, my mom's death, and my dad's withdrawal; slowly I awoke, felt the static air about the cabin, heard the wind and wolves out in the blue morning, and felt the tears come.

  Fran—Chapter 3

  When I reached Lake Stardust, I let Casey walk around to cool off before drinking the water. I heard wolves howling, as I often did when up at the cabin, and it made me feel good. Unpacking my things in the cave, I became aware of noises outside.

  I looked out at the beach and saw that a group of the type of people I had termed Unfortunate Youth Drifters had gathered near the lake. I went right over to them and said, "You're setting up camp on private property."

  It wasn't that I wanted to be greedy, but I'd heard of these types and they never respected the land or water they camped at. It was also true that the land and lake were property my relatives had owned for years. I had my bow and arrow still on my back, but I'm not sure they cared too much about th
at.

  A woman with red hair said, "We've set up camp at an old house over that way." She pointed upslope to a direction not leading to our mountain. "We just came down to bathe."

  "This lake is a sensitive wildlife area," I said. "I'm trying to keep it stocked with fish."

  The woman looked puzzled.

  "Have you ever captured rainfall?" I asked.

  "Sure, I guess," she said dryly.

  "That's how we bathe on this mountain."

  The woman told her friends to stay out of the water.

  "For god's sake, you can swim a bit," I added. "It's damn hot. I'm just asking that you respect these waters and don't put chemicals in the lake."

  Her expression was incredulous. Like, how dare I ask such a thing. In the end, however, she seemed pleasant enough and introduced herself as Miranda. Her speech was robotic almost. I wondered if her soul had left. Her friends agreed to stay up at the house they'd found and not camp or bathe down at Lake Stardust. Miranda came over to my cave to see my setup, and I talked with her more about where they'd been; meanwhile I set up a canopy over the entrance to my cave.

  "We are mostly from Montana," she explained. "But I've been all over. What about you?"

  "I haven't been further than Sandpoint for years."

  "You don't want to see what's happening out there."

  "Oh, I hear from people who come around the mountain. Not too often, but there are the occasional folks."

  "With most things off the grid, we rely on rumors because it's all we have. But I've seen what it's like in some places. So much death. Everything that had been hanging on by stitches just collapsed during the tipping point." This was typical of what travelers would tell us, if they happened upon the mountain, so I had heard it all. And we had followed it while on the grid, but those times were over.

  "But people have survived." I tried to look on the bright side. It was a defense mechanism as I imagined my mother having died on the road.

  "Few," she said. "I've been through absolutely empty cities, and then come across people like you who are in some forgotten pocket of time and space."

  "We don't get many up here either," I pointed out. "The occasional crazy person." I snickered inside.

  When I had first come across the drifters that morning, the man I would come to know wasn't with them. After the drifters retreated to the house on their mountain, I rode Casey back up to the cabin to retrieve more goods. Upon returning to the cave later, I felt drearily warm and saw that our mountain pack of wolves had beat me to the cool waters. They bounded away when I approached the beach.

  I dismounted Casey in front of the cave and heard singing and a guitar. The noise was faint, and I strained to listen and could barely make out the words, but finally realized it was a song recorded long ago at an outdoor concert. I couldn't make out where the singer was, but it was male, and he sang of stardust and billion-old carbon. His song toppled in a dry breeze over the lake. His voice, the way the wind fell around me, and the hot sun made me dreamy. But I had to get some things done.

  After cooling off Casey, I headed out to search for the singing, but eventually it stopped and I was so hungry I hiked down the shoreline to catch my supper with my wooden fishing pole.

  Upon my return, I saw a rugged man sitting cross-legged in front of my cave. A guitar was next to him. What an interesting culprit, I thought. His eyes were closed and his skin deeply tanned. He had a scraggly beard and unruly head of hair that was the color between molasses and honey. I didn’t know whether to disturb his peace with disappointment at his intrusion or stand by curiously. He looked up at me with blue-green and foreboding eyes, a jarring discovery, as I stood there dirty and hot. His facial expression carried the utmost smugness at that moment, as if he were looking through me, like I wasn’t there.

  “This is my camp,” I said. I wanted to clean up in private.

  The stranger didn’t say a word. He half-ass grinned, with a sneer and closed his eyes again. He didn't reply to me at all. Instead, he closed his eyes and eventually fell asleep right there.

  Later that evening, after the heat began to retreat with the sun, I washed myself down with water I had gathered from the lake and soap Elena and I had crafted back at the ranch. I could see our pack of wolves, five of them, stalking in the distance. They'd cool off around the water during the hot days of the summers and come back in the evening to sip water or try to catch fish. They didn't bother me, and I didn't bother them.

  I sat back on a little roll-up rug and enjoyed my own fish while watching another moody evening set in. Then I unpacked a few things: my journal, some clothes, matches, wine. These days sunsets appeared harsh, red, and angry. That ball of fire sank into the lake like a dragon folding its wings. I shivered some, even though the nightly heat was just as unbearable and the mosquitoes and gnats started in. Thunder rolled in the distance, and the wind started. I was wearing my usual cotton clothes, which worked best in the heat. Elena had made us all kinds of tunics and various lengths of cotton pants and skirts. Tonight I wore one of her home-made old robes, feeling a little dreamy with this guy nearby, whoever he was.

  Beneath the fading light, I began to read a book I’d brought by William Butler Yeats, called Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland. I had read it once before. My father had bought it in Doolin, Ireland, in his travels, but even back then the book was ancient. By now I knew for a fact that fairies were not real, of course, but I liked the mythology of them—and wondered why, even in the most modern of historical times, before the tipping point, farmers still wouldn’t cut down a hawthorn tree, even if it was in the middle of a field. One myth said that the trees belonged to fairies and leaving the tree alone was a sign of good luck and respect to the little good folk and cutting the tree down could bring a curse. It was just my whimsical nature to appreciate such tales, even as an adult. As a child, and even now, I felt most at home in the woodlands around me. When younger, my imagination was wilder, and I believed that there might be a tiny flutter of a thing with translucent wings darting between flowers or dancing in the whirlwind of leaves in autumn. If I would be true to myself now, I still hoped for it, but knew better.

  My reading was broken when the man woke up, and as I watched him he hardly acknowledged me, just with a quick wave good bye and he was off. He was building a camp across the wide stretch of sandy beach from me, in another cave system that opened its mouth at the breadth of the beach. His was smaller. I knew, for I’d been there and chosen my cave to vacation in instead. I could see his firelight lick the blackness of the liquid, cavernous night. I had fish left and hung it over the dwindling fire before drinking a wooden cup of red wine. Before long, I was so sleepy that I curled up in the rug, back into the reaches of the grotto, bow at my side, and I finally dozed off to a storm-filled night.

  I felt that the lone drifter had some connection to the others up there, but I wasn't sure what that association was at first. I didn’t know his name for days. He stuck to himself, venturing now and then up to the others. I took fewer fishing trips, preferring to stay at my camp more and act as a look-out. I survived off fish, dried apples, and pinyon nuts. I dreamed of the wild pig. Though the lake water was clean, I always tested it and sometimes, when freak rainstorms resulted in excessive stormwater, I would boil the water or use chemicals to purify it before drinking it or bathing with it.

  One day I saw the man fishing. He stood like he was taking a pee, that man kind of stance where he leaned back like someone important and cast out his line to the world. He seemed proud and significant. I said nothing.

  Another night I heard a rumbling at my cave, and thinking it was him, I lit a lantern. I could smell the rotten breath of too much whiskey and recognized a drifter from up the mountain peering into my cave saying, “Hey there! Are you there, Fran?”

  I gathered my bow and arrows but didn’t say a word.

  “Oh c’mon now, you purty thing,” he moaned, “I knew someday I would have to come down and say hi.”

 
; The man's big form shadowed the cave entrance, and he wore dingy jeans with a belly folded over his belt and a t-shirt that said, “Freakin’ Sweet.”

  I remembered seeing him before but didn't know his name.

  “Please leave me alone.”

  “You really oughtta come party with us, girl. Come on!”

  His voice was getting loud. I lowered the lantern so he couldn’t see me, even if he was able to in the beginning, though I doubted it due to his intoxicated state and inability to stand straight or talk clearly. I wondered how he managed to find me down the hillside.

  This rendezvous didn’t last much longer, for my bearded friend popped over and grabbed the drifter from behind, holding a fishing knife to his neck, and said, “If I were you, I’d get moving right back up that hillside and not come back here again, alone or with your friends.”

  “What the fuck, Leo,” said the drifter.

  “You don’t get to call me Leo,” said the bearded man, and he withdrew the knife, shoving the bloated pig away and heading him on home.

  I was a little intimidated by Leo’s rugged and handsome appearance, set my bow aside, and clutched my rug up to my chin. Leo, or the one who didn’t want to be called Leo, gave me an angry look as though it was my fault his night had been disturbed. His gaze was sharp, and he crouched down to enter my place, then came back to talk to me.

  “You shouldn’t really be camping out by yourself. Those guys are trouble.” His voice was husky and commanding.

  The mere proximity of Leo made me heated. He was like quintessential manliness for my stupid, naive soul, and I could barely say a word. I had punched a man once in a bar, out-drank friends in contests, out-ridden my school mates in horse races, and climbed higher than anyone in my fifth grade class up the old mountain oak outside The Daily Bee's newspaper office as a dare, but this person made me feel small and timid.