Tiger, Tiger

by Johanna Skibsrud

  Later, when all she had was time on her hands, she spent a lot of it rewatching all sixty-seven episodes that had been aired before takeoff—and then a lot of the unedited material as well. It was funny, but it was always the hours of uncut footage that felt surreal and strange to her when she watched them later, and the carefully edited episodes that felt somehow “right.” It really was incredible, she reflected, the way the editors had managed to distill everything in such a way that the episodes ended up feeling more true to life than real life ever did.

  It was all a matter of perspective, of course, and the trick—Sabrina considered—to life, as well as to television, was in finding a way of seeing things from the outside—and yourself as just another part of a larger story. A story that, though you might not know where it’s headed, or what part in it you will ultimately play, has a genuine arc and is progressing toward some inevitable end.

  * * *

  —

  Based on the immense popularity of the show’s first season, the producers bragged that it wouldn’t be long before successive seasons of The Last Frontier sent enough pioneers to populate the entire planet. But almost before the first pioneers left the Earth’s atmosphere, the show’s ratings began to drop. Six months later—the moment everyone had been waiting for—when the pioneers first set foot on Mars, real-time coverage dwindled to an hour-long nightly recap. Six months after that, the program was cut to a once-a-week half-hour segment—which, when commercial time was taken into consideration, really only amounted to something less than twenty minutes.

  Nobody talked anymore about future seasons—and nobody talked about bringing the pioneers home.

  Of course, once it became clear the way things were going, everyone said they “could have seen it coming.” Everything—even, or rather especially, reality—has a shelf life, after all, and really (the producers all said) there had never been any reason not to expect a gradual loss of interest. They weren’t in much of a position to complain: by the time the show entered its “final round,” they’d made their money back on the launch six times over.

  For a while, there were the usual attempts to keep the energy, and the ratings, up. A few relatively tedious romantic dramas developed naturally or were invented. A baby was conceived, then born. (Ten months after blast-off, Nadar gave birth to a baby girl: Adara, named for the brightest star in the sky.) More valuable than those who celebrated the birth were those who condemned it. It was one thing to banish seven consenting adults to another planet, dissenters opined, but quite another to banish an unborn child. For a few weeks after the news broke that Nadar was expecting, and then again after the baby was born, protests were staged in Washington, Paris, Toronto, Beijing. “Save our star!” “Bring Adara home!”

  Ratings on both occasions soared—but there was no way, the show’s writers complained, to build on the story without actually bringing the kid home (something the station had made clear from the beginning was frankly impossible).

  They were being cut off, Sabrina understood, finally. The realization had been slow at first, but she couldn’t fool herself forever: it had been a long time since she’d felt that “real time” was progressing toward anything—well, real. No, it wouldn’t be long at all, she lamented candidly into the camera one night, until the red planet’s first pioneers were left to themselves, the camera gaping at them uselessly above. Until there was no one left to cut or edit or rearrange, let alone to actually witness the material of their lives.

  LET US BEGIN IN THE USUAL WAY, AT THE BEGINNING.

  Although even on this point, our party was frankly divided. Our stated ambition—five hundred years to the day after the shipwreck of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca at what is now the port of Galveston—was to retrace the uncertain route that explorer took across a continent that was still yet to be “discovered.” And yet how, exactly, we were going to do so was by no means clear.1

  It was absolutely necessary, some—rather vocal—members of our party maintained, that any re-enactment of de Vaca’s journey begin from Spain. And yet, it was rejoined, even if we began by retracing de Vaca’s route from the Old World to the New (adding, as might be imagined, untold financial and logistical complications to what had been, until this point, a relatively modest proposal), it would still be necessary to establish some point of departure. Would it not, then, be just as well to begin from the much more readily accessible Galveston shore?

  Perhaps it would be more fitting (one member suggested) to begin neither “here” nor “there” but at the summit of the long-extinct volcano on the largest of the Canary Islands, the last lava of which had not flowed in roughly one thousand years. We might follow the same route de Vaca once did—after his appointment as governor of those recently conquered isles. Might, from that vantage point, stare off—as he once, doubtless, did—toward where, at the farthest limit of vision, the ocean gave way, not to emptiness, but to other limits, other unknown shores.

  But if (it was countered) we were going to cast back that far in both distance and time, we might just as well cast even further. Begin in the little Andalusian town, midway between the mountains and the sea, where de Vaca was born. Or at the mountain pass—once, apparently, marked by the head of a cow—through which the King of Navarre was once led to safety by an illustrious ancestor of little Álvar.2

  But the costs of beginning at such a remote crossroads in both space and time, and not any other perhaps equally valid, and doubtless more accessible, location, led us to put these ideas quite out of our mind. (And was that not, we reasoned amongst ourselves, the very meaning of history: to arrive at—and embark from—if not exactly the beginning, a place to begin?)

  And so we began our expedition, as had been initially proposed, on Galveston Island, in front of the Seaview vacation condos, adjacent to the pier.

  We fashioned rafts of approximately the same shape and size as those the explorer had constructed for himself and his men, and stumbled from them onto the “unknown” shore.

  We looked about. Wondered, like de Vaca, if (though we had been blown terribly off course and lost over half of our men) we had not, after all, reached our intended destination.3

  Without being certain, we set out across the highway, past Reef Realty and Supply and Demand Wholesale Lumber, then plunged bravely into the empty lot behind Gulf Coast Plaza where, almost immediately, we got hung up in a large swamp. After a lengthy and sometimes heated discussion, we decided to bypass the wettest regions by following the Aughsten Road. We had agreed to avoid any pre-existing highways, but this decision had been contentious from the outset. It was argued that the explorer himself would have been only too eager to follow any road or pathway that presented itself to him. To specifically avoid any route that had already been travelled was—these more opportunist members of our group maintained—to be unfaithful to the spirit and the intention of the original voyage.

  And yet, as others rejoined, more pertinent to our overall intention was the reclamation of some sense—and by whatever means possible—of the unexpected.

  It was necessary to remind ourselves of this again when, just after noon, we found ourselves arrested by the local police for trespassing on the grounds of a private home. This misadventure delayed us by nearly a week, and when we were finally able to clear ourselves of charges (with the help of a local lawyer, who also happened to be a history enthusiast and an amateur thespian) and continue on our way, we found ourselves beset by a swarm of reporters and several camera crews.

  Though we tried our best to behave naturally in front of the cameras, we were always, at least in some sense, aware that our every movement was being recorded—that whatever we did or said might potentially be broadcast live across the country or, by some accounts, the world.

  One positive outcome of all of this was that we were no longer troubled by a particularly contentious issue we had not yet resolved: the problem of how we were going to recreate the purported enslavement of Cabeza de Vaca and fifteen of his men. I
t was now believed that references to slavery in de Vaca’s account were intended only metaphorically; that, far from enslaving the European adventurers, the Native inhabitants of the Gulf Coast region acted instead as guardians and saviours to the unfortunate crew. It is in any case quite clear that without a Native presence on the island, Cabeza de Vaca would certainly have perished along with the rest of his men—and with them, every trace of their voyage.

  We agreed on the following point: that the media attention—which we’d at first unanimously bemoaned as distracting and inauthentic—proved as apt an analogy as we were likely to hit upon for the sort of scrutiny Cabeza de Vaca and his fifteen men would have experienced upon first drifting onto Texan shores. They, too, we reflected, would at the very least have felt—as we did—“not quite themselves” in being examined so closely, and through such a distinctly foreign lens. They, too, would have felt vulnerable to disapproval, censure, and every other imaginable attack.

  And yet, it was not all bad. Our story had reached every corner of the country—had even wrapped around the globe! Everywhere we went the local inhabitants clamoured to greet us. Buses arrived and dumped out tourists who snapped photographs. People opened their homes, delivered us blankets and food. For the most part, the weather held, and—because of our following—food was always plentiful. It would have been easy to grow complacent, even lazy. But for the sake of authenticity, we sometimes foraged for food among the restaurant and fish shack dumpsters, or even purposely went hungry—fasting, sometimes for several days.

  Though the frank admiration and festive mood that greeted us was a stark contrast to the reticence and suspicion that had met de Vaca and his crew, we often reminded ourselves that our reception was not unlike the reception of the great explorer during the latter years of his wanderings. Throngs of people gathered to greet him, to reach out toward him as he passed—everybody desperately hoping they might find themselves touched, even healed, through simple proximity to something that they didn’t understand.

  And so it goes. We were propelled, just as history is propelled, by our own story, which preceded us, and by which (in the form of both the television crews and this account, which had not yet been written) we were followed. We witnessed it, our own journey, in the eyes of the people who lined the streets of the towns we passed through, the highways we crossed, the rivers we forded, and the parking lots in which we slept and foraged for food. Recognized in their frank expressions, and the way they lifted their arms to hail us as we went, the same simple expectation that had prompted us to begin our own voyage—to strike off, into whatever wilderness remains. An expectation that the world, despite the ways in which it has so far been described, can bend and change; that the blank spaces on the map can be filled in, made known.

  And when at night we lay huddled together under the bleachers of an abandoned stadium, or the awning of a bus stop, or under the simple, open air, we often spoke of what we might offer these people. What message might we trail—as de Vaca once did—like a scent through the wilderness? What words, what message might we, five hundred years later, and in good faith, pass on? What could we say? How could we willingly progress, while still remaining loyal to the operations both of history and of the human heart—each of which beats only because it doesn’t know how or why it first began beating, or if or when it will stop?

  1 It is well known that the account of de Vaca’s journey is riddled with numerous errors in both chronology and geography. We therefore pledged that our own retracing of it would be, of necessity, both erratic and undisciplined.

  2 An event that led, more or less directly, to the eventual conquest of the Muslim Moors, and earned the illustrious ancestor (along with generations to follow) the name of the animal’s body part that had pointed the way.

  3 Arriving on the Galveston coast, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wondered if he had, in fact, reached La Florida, as had been his intention. After all, it is difficult to know, when arriving in a place you have never been, if it is or is not the place you have been looking for.

  MY FATHER HAD BEEN PART OF THE FAMOUS LOST BATTALION, one of forty-six men of the 307th and 308th Infantry who walked out of the Argonne Forest after everyone else had been killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or had otherwise disappeared.

  He found God in those woods, he would say. Standing in full dress uniform at the front of the revival tent, on the makeshift stage my brother and I had hammered together mere hours before, he would shout, “I was lost! But now, now I’ve been found!” He would work himself into such a fury as he spoke that it was difficult to tell, sometimes, where he left off speaking of the Meuse-Argonne offensive and began speaking of the fire and brimstone that awaited the unlucky in hell.

  My brother and I would run through the crowd holding our empty hats in our hands.

  “And did we surrender?” my father would ask, shaking his fist at the air. “We could not help but doubt, but did we—even once—think of surrendering to the enemy, though they had us surrounded on every side?”

  Our hats grew heavier, then heavier still. So I came to understand something, and from a young age: that there is a cost to everything, even the opening and closing of the human heart. It is an invisible cost, but it is a cost nonetheless, and this knowledge, gleaned from the words of my father as they became physical objects, which I collected from the crowd—my first lesson in the simple economics of the human soul—stands me in good stead even now, long after I have ceased to believe in the words, in God, or in my father.

  * * *

  —

  For as long as I could remember, it had been my father’s custom to escort one or two of his most devout followers—of the female persuasion—to our tent at night. With these young devotees we shared our evening meal, and my father would relate a story or two from the time he had spent in the Argonne Forest.

  “We were not lost in the ordinary sense of the word. Oh no! We knew exactly where we were the whole time. And so did command headquarters, and so, too, did the Germans. It was because of this, after all—because everyone in the world knew exactly where we were, including the enemy—that we were lost. As in”—here my father would pause and, without any trouble, seek out the eyes of the faithful—“desperate,” my father would say. “As in, beyond hope.” After dropping his gaze, he would continue brusquely. “Our mission, however,” he’d say, “was to hold our position at any cost. Even though we knew we had been cut off—that we were now surrounded by the enemy on every side. Even though we could hear the voices of German officers as they called out roll in the morning!

  “All day long we were barraged by enemy fire. Men dropped silently. Screams were swallowed, or stuffed into mouths like rags. There was no mess call, as we had eaten all our food, and it was bitter cold without our winter garments, which—in order to aid our travel—we had purposely left behind. We had only our weapons and two pigeons—the second-to-last of which was released before noon.

  “Our message was simple: ‘Cannot support be sent at once?’

  “Almost at once, and very simply, an answer came. We recognized our own artillery fire peppering the hills to the south, and rejoiced. But then a round landed in our own pocket. Then another, and another. There was nothing for us to do but dive into our holes and lie still, like dead men. Above us, the earth shook with the rattle and roar of our own guns. Our holes collapsed, burying some of us alive. Those of us who emerged did so to find that the heavy shelling had stripped away the dense brush and trees that had served as our only protection.

  “It was into this devastated landscape, toward a horizon empty of all but the barest of forms, that our last pigeon, the veteran carrier, Cher Ami, was sent with our final message. A message that—attesting again to the fact that we were not and had never been lost in any physical sense—described our exact position along the 276th parallel, and concluded: ‘For heaven’s sake, stop it.’

  “We watched. All of us together, the living and the dead. Our faces turned toward t
he open sky as our only hope—our Cher Ami—flitted first this way, then that, dodging enemy bullets as she went. She seemed to hover, rather than fly, as if suspended by our own desire. When she rested, taking what shelter she could in the lower branches of a blasted tree, we urged her on from below with words—then with a few well-placed stones. When she took off once more, flying directly into the enemy fire”—here again my father sought the faithful’s eye—“we saw the impact,” he said. “Saw her stutter, fall—recover slightly—then, wavering, continue on, out of sight, finally disappearing from our view, like water evaporating slowly in air.”

  * * *

  —

  It was always some comfort to me, after this particular story, to hear the commotion my father made as my brother and I waited outside. I knew, you see, that if I heard my father’s grunts and the cries of the faithful, who, even after my father had sworn in agony and was quiet, would continue to softly call out, that my father would soon be in a generous mood. But it was precisely into this comforting quiet, when just the pleasant, lingering sobs of the faithful could be heard, that the trouble burst one night. A light flared and a low murmur of voices grew to a muffled roar. Without a word, my brother and I crept together into my father’s tent in order to warn him—just as a gun, firing in the near distance, did our work for us.

  At the sound of the gun, the faithful—who just a moment before had been sleeping, blissfully unaware, at my father’s side—shrieked, and at that exact moment she saw us. Our eyes glittering, no doubt, like the eyes of animals in the dim light. I saw her naked breasts swing, and I recall thinking how unbearably heavy they appeared as she stumbled in the near dark, reaching blindly for her clothes.

  My father’s pale backside was visible to us, too. He lumbered up like a drunken bear, then stood gazing at us—our faces by now, and not merely our eyes, apparent to him as the light from the approaching torches flared briefly in our direction. Not half-lit, half-fallen in shadow, but flickering; visible only half of the time. Now you could see us, now you could not. This was also the way that our father appeared to us. One moment he was illuminated—larger than life—and the next he had disappeared from view. But as the crowd approached there was less and less time in which our father did not appear to us, and finally there was no time at all. We stood together, illuminated by an unbearable blinding light.