Magdalena Mountain

by Robert Michael Pyle

  Among the candidates are the winter-passage stages of arctic-alpine butterflies: eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalides, proof against the wind, carrying their fragile selves through hostilities so severe as to be found only in such high ranges of rock as these. For Erebia, winter is a time of passive repose, to be gotten through alive. Antifreeze in the tiny larva’s blood keeps ice crystals from rupturing delicate tissues. His metabolism has dropped to near nil. Winter for the Magdalena alpine is a time when nothing happens at all other than bare, tenuous existence. This terrible season claims few lives among his brood. The flash freeze keeps most predators at bay while cold-storing the frost-free larvae for spring. Erebia, curled and still, guards a flicker of life inside his sliver of self, and that is all he has to do. Chances are, no one is going to interfere.

  But the grylloblattid creeps into the hollow where Erebia and several of his siblings have gone to ground. It palps a beetle grub and consumes it in minutes before moving on to an egg mass of a rock spider, which it nibbles like popcorn. Two Magdalena larvettes, minor morsels that they are, fall prey to the grylloblattid before it swerves out of this particular declivity and moves on to a pika’s den, looking for lice, and is fulfilled. This is winter’s last close call for Erebia. He’ll ride out the rest, secure in his alpine tent of silk and grass.

  There comes a break in the weather. A hint of a promise of an imputation of the rumor of spring arrives on a warm Chinook wind. Grasses in the foothills show the first fleeting green, and along the streams, cottonwood buds swell toward bursting in balsamic waves of fragrance. Up on the mountain, a thaw too soon might start the growing season perilously early, and an unusually late blizzard could jeopardize the early birds.

  But it isn’t only temperature rising, or a warm wind. Too well honed by evolution to the irregular weather of the Rockies to be fooled, Erebia waits for the right combination of warmth and length of day before stirring. The alpine grasses he’ll need are tuned to the same two signals. Both the intensity and the duration of the sun must agree before the key is turned.

  Such conditions befall the face of Magdalena Mountain one day in late April. The sun strikes the easternmost of the mountain’s twin summits twelve and a half hours before it sets behind the western peak. The temperature hits fifty-five Fahrenheit in the sunshine at noon. A pika pokes its gray face up into the sunshine, and a marmot rolls over in its dreams of green grass and glacier lilies.

  Green creeps up a grass shoot cell by cell, and with it, a very small caterpillar. The worm turns, and Erebia begins to feed.

  8

  One day in late February, Mary Glanville looked into a mirror and recognized herself. Slender, tall, auburn-haired with a curl; high-cheeked, strong-nosed Mary, pretty in spite of recent extremis and winter’s smoky pallor, yet as dull of eye and skin as olives left too long in a party dish. And there was a look to her mouth she didn’t know at all. Her long, strong lips were forced back and down, their corners deep in her cheeks, making shadows beneath and creases to the side a little like a smile, but nothing like it really, for what it said was only this: rue. And though stretched at the corners, her lips pursed a little in the middle, pronouncing a sleek V below her well-formed philtrum. All these features were exaggerated by the cheap lipstick the home’s beautician had applied after she washed Mary’s curls. Rue, she thought. That’s me.

  So Mary hibernated, only eating, only sleeping, only expelling, seldom washing, and growing duller, running down, breathing roughly in the cigarette stench. In a more lucid moment she thought, Only a few months, and already resignation creeps over me. Soon I’ll be like these others—I will steal clothes, grow filthy and scabby, leer at visitors, soil myself, turn crazy. And one day, far too far away from God knows where, I shall die.

  After a sad parody of a Christmas party, someone mentioned that the days would be getting longer. “Why?” asked a resident.

  “Well, honey, no season lasts forever,” said the nurse. “The sun comes up and goes down, and the days go with it. Then, poof! One day it’s spring, and the flowers bloom. You’ll see.”

  “Season,” Mary heard. Read the seasons, she thought. And then more thoughts. To read: the verb danced around and taunted her until she tried, but the first book she attempted seemed as belligerent and unwilling to make sense as half the people around her. She threw it down with disgust. The next time she tried, she picked up a battered black book of Bible stories. They made no more sense than the first one. But as she closed it in frustration, a title caught her eye and struck her through like a nurse’s needle, but pricking that felt good. She couldn’t read—why? It was maddening. She kept trying day after day, looking at pictures, fingering the pages, mouthing the syllables. After a month, Mary felt that she had the gist of the story. Excited, she tried to repeat it to a nurse, but her agitation only earned her an extra dose of meds.

  Three days later, when again she was able to read, the book was gone from the little library. And this caused Mary to speak her first full sentence in six months: “Where . . . is . . . that . . . book?”

  “Which book, dear?” asked a new aide who didn’t know her.

  “Bible stories . . . black.” Mary struggled, but got it out.

  “Hey, Agnes, Mary’s talking!” shouted Nurse Dumfries, the administrator, who was passing through the floor when she heard the unfamiliar voice. Agnes and two other workers scooted over to hear for themselves.

  “Mary, you’re speaking—wonderful!” said Agnes, the nurse who had replaced Iris.

  Mary grew more and more exercised. “WHERE IS IT?”

  “She’s missing some book of Bible stories,” the aide explained.

  “Oh, Mary, honey, that book isn’t good for you. It got you overexcited, so we had to give you a shot. We discarded it. There are lots of other books.”

  Again Mary wanted to howl, but she didn’t. It didn’t matter. She knew the story by now, and although the book hadn’t gotten all the details right, it had reminded her. And she knew something else. There would be no keeping her here now. Something had to happen, and if it didn’t, she would kill herself, and that would bring it all around again, with a different outcome. She wandered off, oblivious to the nurses’ pleas to “Talk more, Mary! Say something else!”

  “Well, it’s something. First time!” Agnes exclaimed.

  “Yes,” said Nurse Dumfries. “But I wish the mission would stop slipping those religious books and tracts in here. They make them crazier than they already are. Do you have any idea how many Jesus Christs we’ve got in here this week?”

  “No, but Cyrus told me this morning that as the Messiah, he could damn well have French toast whenever he wanted,” Agnes admitted. “And real maple syrup.”

  Mary spoke no more, but she thought. She remembered a time before the accident they said she’d had, even vaguely recalled where she was going at the time of the wreck, but not the ground squirrel that had loped beneath her wheel, nor the plummet itself. And, more important, she remembered before—a very long time before. Yes, one way or the other, things would change. They had to, now; they couldn’t keep her there. As she lay and played herself to sleep, she took a little pleasure instead of mere relief from her sex. And why not? Spring was coming, as the nurse said. And with it, a real release, she felt sure, from the stinking, the sad, the unthinkable situation she’d endured for all these months.

  It had to come. If not soon, by some agency, she would fashion her own escape. For to live on here among the lost, having found herself, would be intolerable. All right for some. A few adaptable and clever residents even managed to make some sort of satisfied accommodation. They ignored the worst of it, sleeping there but living lives largely outside the home thanks to shoe leather and the Denver Tramway Company pass. But that was not for Mary. There was nothing on the streets of Denver for her. As she became more and more sentient, she grew less and less capable of shutting out the despair around her. Her only conceivable solutions were departure, den
ial, or death; and denial was not going to work. Mary wrapped her pupal sheets around herself and slept the most peaceful sleep in what seemed like hundreds of years.

  Then one day in March, the snow melted gray and ran brown down the gutters, and Denver entered its ugliest time. But a Chinook wind warmed that day, and a green thing precociously poked up into the vacant lot behind the center—a tumbleweed shoot. Mary saw it and recognized, with the sharpest sense since that first wail, a remnant of something that felt a little bit like hope.

  9

  “Spring!” announced Mead, alarming Francie Chan, his lab partner. That morning he’d seen something that looked like a swelling bud. He brought it into the lab, placed it in a beaker of water on his desk, and already it had unfurled into a small leaf smelling of balsam. “Spring,” he said again more softly, carried back for the moment to a cottonwood-lined acequia outside Albuquerque. The word sounded almost foreign.

  That igneous autumn in New Haven had passed quickly; then came in its place a kind of cold Mead had never known in New Mexico. Riding on particles of dampness, it penetrated his clothing and joints like frost fingers in a sidewalk. He was used to an arid chill, not this gelid breath between the ribs. Shifting between overheated buildings, the dank outside air, and his “all-season beach cottage” that wasn’t really winterized for anyone but seals or penguins, he caught a bronchitis that clutched his thorax like a robber fly and wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t stop coughing without whiskey, and the hitchhike out to Branford became a slog in the freezing slush.

  Christmas came cold. Mead spent Christmas Eve lonely in his lab and Christmas Day with the Winchesters, his only invitation. He decided after the break to move into New Haven. At first he had thought his fellowship enormous. He soon found that the high tuition and East Coast prices—no free coffee refills at Dunkin’ Donuts, even—eroded his checking account like dust in a downpour. He couldn’t afford the cheapest apartment. He was bewailing the fact one afternoon to Francie, who was finishing up that semester. “Maybe you should take my studio,” she said. “I’ll be moving out soon.” Mead had heard that Francie used a room in the building as a printmaking studio. “Come on,” she said, leading him down the hall and up a fold-down ladder, and gave him a tour. When his eyes adjusted, Mead beheld a tiny, high-ceilinged round room in one of the twin castellated towers of Osborn Lab. He moved in a week later. This was not strictly legal, but generations of ecology students had camped here or used it as Francie had, as an auxiliary space for their activities. The hexagonal stone walls were still hung with her wonderful silk-screened prints of Rocky Mountain wildflowers and scenes.

  The tower seemed romantic, warmer than Mead’s beach cottage, and convenient to both his lab and the museum. Plus, the price was right. By waiting late to scale the steep steel ladder to the turret, he could keep his occupancy discreet. And the move soon prompted an additional boon. Early in the new year, Winchester called Mead into his office. “James,” he said, “are you still curious about the mild scent emanating from the room down the hall?” Mead didn’t consider the stink mild, but he had grown accustomed to it. “Come along,” Winchester continued, “and let me introduce you to some truly remarkable and amenable creatures. It’s time to broaden your responsibilities, in any case. This little ceremony should be put off no longer.”

  Mead kept up with Winchester as well as he could as the professor ate the long hall with his stride, opened one outer door, then one inner one on which were posted dire warnings in his hand: DO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE LIGHTS IN THIS ROOM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. As soon as they entered the lab, a great shuffling arose as the occupants of dozens of cages scattered in alarm or expectation. The odor was stronger here—not bad, just strong, sweet, feral. “What are they?” Mead asked.

  “Blaberus giganteus, the giant cave roach. Surely you recognize them from anatomy lab? And a few other species of blattids.” Then Winchester opened one of the cages and Mead beheld a score or so of the most massive roaches he had ever seen. True, he had dissected roaches nearly as large in an entomology lab, but he’d never seen one alive. His gaze must have betrayed his wonderment.

  “We’ve worked on many aspects of these animals’ biology,” Winchester replied to Mead’s unspoken question. “But their behavior is poorly known. They are relatively easy to keep and breed, and they offer an experimental animal that is both evolutionarily basal and ecologically sophisticated.” Pleased to note that Mead appeared fascinated rather than revolted, always a toss-up with new students, he held up a grand roach that was nearly three inches long and asked, “How do you like them?”

  “Very much,” said Mead. “Their movement is a little creepy, but cockroaches have never bothered me the way they do most people.”

  “Well, these are not cockroaches. Cockroach refers to the Oriental, German, or American species: Blatta orientalis, Blattella germanica, or Periplaneta americana, all of which have become adept urban anthrophiles—or, as some would have it, pests. Anyway, the popular reaction to roaches—or rather, their unpopularity—has more to do with bad press than any actual threat they represent. The insecticides that people spray in their kitchens in an attempt to discourage them are far more dangerous than the insects themselves. Besides,” he asked with mock incredulity, “how could anyone be repelled by such gentle and handsome animals?”

  Mead, duly enchanted, simply nodded.

  “Good. Then I’d like you to take over the feeding and basic monitoring of the colony for a term. You may then find some aspect of the roach program that interests you—if not for a thesis project, then perhaps for independent study. And your assistantship pay will increase a bit. At any rate, such an arrangement should quell Dr. Griffin’s carping about you going into the lab. Here, let me show you the routine.”

  Mead adopted the roaches as if they were his own puppies (they did eat dog food), and their odor became all but imperceptible as he spent more and more time in their gentle, rustling presence.

  The first committee meeting of the new year came and went. No problems attended the review of Mead’s studies, except that Dr. Griffin demanded to know the usefulness of Runic Literature to a biologist. Mead extemporized: “The process of written language development is an evolutionary one. Runes can be thought of as occupying a linguistic position roughly analogous to life in the Paleozoic. From there, the phylogeny of language offers a useful logical paradigm for organic evolution.” Phelps winked at Scotland, unseen by Griffin, who grunted and asked for no further elaboration. But when the discussion moved on to research, he let loose.

  “Assuming your studies are adequate,” he led, “what about your lab experience?”

  “I’ve taken over management of the giant roach colony, Professor.” Mead noticed how Griffin winced at that. “As you know, it has provided grist for several of Yale’s best biochemical and physiological papers. I find I am particularly intrigued by their nocturnal behavior, which hasn’t been much investigated, as it turns out.”

  “Behavior!” Griffin grunted again. “I allow that once they have been dispatched, ground, or sectioned and placed beneath the scope, those disgusting vermin have yielded some useful material. But I cannot begin to imagine that they exhibit any ethological traits worth wasting time or money on. Besides, what you suggest, Mr. Mead, sounds merely descriptive. Do you plan to try to make something of this cockroach caper for your thesis project? And if so, where are the experimental guts of it?”

  Mead began to speak, but Winchester suggested that the question was a bit premature. Then Professor Phelps butted in to remind everyone of a departmental seminar about to begin. That got Mead off the hook, and he didn’t object. Nor did Frank Griffin, eager to get off the subject of roaches.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” George said as they all rose. “Six weeks, then? And Frank,” he added, “they are not cockroaches, you know . . .” But Griffin was already out the door and down the hall, holding his nose as he passed the loathsome chamber. “Oh, well,�
�� Winchester continued. “He just doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  The rest shared a laugh, and Scotland complimented Mead on his “masterful B.S.” regarding the runes.

  “But he meant every word!” replied Winchester on Mead’s behalf, with a grave face and smiling eyes that James never did learn to interpret.

  Later Mead asked the roaches, “Did he mean it or not?” but they wouldn’t let on.

  Living on campus meant two more hours per day in which to study, read, sleep, or socialize. In practice, Mead seemed to socialize mostly with the forgiving blattids. He began to conduct nocturnal vigils among the great insects to see how they spent their time. He would cook some sort of a dinner substitute over a Bunsen burner in his lab while fending off the small, feral relatives of his captive subjects; then he’d spend much of the night in the colony, noting their activity before turning in for a morning’s sleep in his tower cell. This odd schedule suited him: he could rise, wash, and make a class in fifteen minutes flat. All in all, coming into town and the tower seemed a good move.

  Mead had maintained his resolution to ignore October Carson’s journals since he’d transferred his work from the museum to the roach room, but his curiosity remained. At last he decided to ask Winchester about Carson. As they were about to wrap up one of their regular weekly meetings, Mead said, “Professor, there’s one other thing. Just who is, or was, October Carson? And why does the museum have his field journals?”