I expected that days, perhaps weeks, would be needed to scout these woods as methodically as I had explored the pond and meadow, but on my first day I found the creek and, following it northward, encountered a clearing and the creatures that were to be my subject, creatures so fascinating, so complex in their behavior, that they promised a whole book of essays.
I had come upon the clearing at midday, stepping into full sunlight from under the arch of a fallen tree, dazed, delighted, charmed. My creek, which had seemed, in the shadow of the forest, rather too dark and slippery for close inspection, was transformed. Now as lively and lovely as something from a fairy tale, it ran glittering through the middle of this verdant swale.
I proceeded to unpack my lunch and eat it, sitting on the green grass and smiling at my surroundings. Having been disappointed by my meadow and its forlorn pond, I had lowered my expectations, and this clearing, with its picture-book beauty, was a fine surprise, a reward, perhaps, for pushing on. I quoted Rilke to the air: “The earth is like a child that knows poems.”
While eating my lunch, I became aware of a steady low drone that filled the air. The sound was like nothing I had heard before. Most of nature’s noises confirmed my belief that nature was just going through the motions: the repetitive Whatever, Whatever, Whatever of a bird that had lost its mind or the mechanical buzz of thousands of insects in thrall to a numbing need to procreate. But the sound that filled my ears in that clearing carried a profound emotional content, as though all the inhabitants of a great monastery were mourning the loss of paradise.
On finishing my lunch, I wadded up the paper bag and thrust it into my backpack. In my forays into the wilds, I had been delighted to find that this action was reflexive. I am sure no author of nature essays litters.
I had the instincts for my calling. I now employed those instincts to locate this poignant chant that so intrigued me. At first the sound seemed generalized, permeating the air, but I determined that it came from the creek, more specifically from that portion of the creek that disappeared into a thicket of squat shrubs and crooked trees brandishing new, pale-green leaves.
Carefully, not wishing to make any disturbance that would alert the maker of the sound, I pushed through thorny underbrush, crawling on my hands and knees like a soldier behind enemy lines.
I could not have come upon them from a better angle had I planned it knowing their location. I peered from behind a screen of leafy vines and was rewarded with my first view of the crayfish, perhaps fifteen of them scurrying in and out of their burrows on the opposite bank.
I did not know, then, that they were crayfish. Later that evening I called Harry Ackermann, and he supplied me with the name. Harry taught biology at Clayton and had been doing so for many decades. I caught him at home, and he was in a hurry to get back to his bridge game where the possibilities for a grand slam invested his voice with an excitement I had never heard before (dear God, how our lives narrow in the home stretch).
I described the creatures and would have supplied what I knew of their habits from this first encounter, but Harry cut me off. “They’re not insects,” he said. “They are crustaceans, crayfish. That’s the only freshwater animal that fits your description. That armor you are describing is an exoskeleton. The—” I could hear someone hollering in the background, a shrill female voice that I recognized as belonging to old Dean Winfrey Podner, a lesbian according to student legend, which I found fanciful, for it required thinking of the dean in sexual terms. “Look, I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up.
I watched my crayfish all that afternoon, retreating only when I became aware of the sinking sun and realized I’d be making my way through the woods in the dark if I didn’t call it a day.
Those hours of observation on that first day were strewn with epiphanies. My Muse hugged herself for joy and sang within my head.
The sad hum that filled the air was clearly generated by the crayfish who vibrated in a minor key as they scuttled over the bare clay soil, diving into holes in the bank, leaping in and out of the bright water of the stream.
Sometimes two crayfish would encounter each other, hug, their bodies shivering more rapidly while their antennae waved wildly. Whether this entwining was sexual or served some other function, I couldn’t determine. Later I learned that this activity had to do with enlisting other members in what I came to call a meld, intending to seek out the proper term at a later date.
Before leaping into the water, the crayfish would remove parts of their armor—what Harry called their exoskeletons—revealing smooth flesh, white as toothpaste, that boiled with tiny tentacles. I would have liked to discuss this removable exoskeleton with Harry and would have broached the subject on the phone had his manner been less abrupt. Was this common to crustaceans, this ability to doff their exoskeletons? I was almost certain that other creatures couldn’t do this. Turtles couldn’t shed their shells and snails . . . well, maybe snails could. I mean, that’s what slugs are, right?
That evening, when I arrived home, I found Audrey working zealously in the neglected vegetable garden by the side of the house. Neither of us had ever thought to resuscitate this garden, hadn’t spoken of it. Audrey didn’t like gardens of any kind and had hinted at unpleasant experiences with vegetables in her past, but that evening her face was streaked with black dirt, and her shaved head shone with honest sweat—so few women have the bone structure to carry off a shorn look; Audrey does—and she smiled at me with the pride of a hard day’s labor done and, turning away, hefted her hoe again and had at the weeds. I didn’t tell her about my crayfish. I wanted to surprise her with the essay.
I entered the house and went straight for the kitchen where I grabbed an apple and a box of crackers. Then it was off to the study and to work. I began my essay:
We are human and we think in human terms. Draw a line from a stone to a star, from a dinosaur bone to a dead ant, and wherever the lines intersect, there lies the human heart. Are we hopelessly self-referential or does the world truly speak to us?
It is easy to relate to those clear similarities, those echoes of our own mortal condition. The gorilla in his cage induces guilt when we look into his eyes. We see ourselves. The dead raccoon induces the same guilt when, at the wheels of our automobiles, we speed past its carcass, tossed negligently to the side of the road. We see our own unhappy ends. But what of smaller, more elusive creatures whose suffering is largely hidden from us? What of the low moan of little things? Can that really be grief we hear or is it an accident, harmonies with another purpose that fall upon our human ears and take the shape of sadness? I speak of the lonesome song of the crayfish, that song that the wind carries to us, that sound that seems encoded with loss and despair.
I was very pleased with that beginning, so pleased that I couldn’t continue. Art should never be hurried, particularly the essay with its obligatory andante. Besides, I needed more familiarity with my subject, more detail to support my reflective voice.
As the weeks went by I was reminded of the danger of confusing the metaphor with what it illustrates. I was so fascinated by these crayfish that I often lost the essayist in the amateur naturalist.
But I think I always regained the higher ground, and, in all humility, I think these passages demonstrate that:
When I witness crayfish melding, generally in twelves or nines, more rarely in sixes, I am always amazed at how they fold into a completely new organism. The mega-crayfish seems to defy its origins, to heroically turn its back on the past. Single crayfish eat their exoskeletons before the meld, knowing there is no going back, demonstrating a selflessness that human societies might find admirable.
The first time I observed a mega-crayfish I had come upon it after the meld. I thought I was seeing a different animal entirely, although not one I was familiar with. The mega-crayfish comes in a variety of shapes, and this one looked something like a cat-sized spider except that it had a great many more legs than a spider and moved by collapsing a number of legs and falling i
n that direction, creating an odd, rollicking form of locomotion. This one dove into the water and returned with a frog which, I assumed, it was going to eat. Instead, it took the frog apart, peeling the skin back and plucking out various organs which it handed to the mendicant crayfish surrounding it. This was unpleasant to watch, since the frog continued to struggle throughout the operation, and the mega-crayfish performed the dissection with slow, finicky care. I expected the waiting crayfish to devour the morsels they had received from the mega-crayfish, and perhaps they did, but they did this out of my sight, disappearing into their holes with their treasures.
After the skeleton had been dismantled and carried away, when the frog was nothing more than a sheath of mottled skin, the mega-crayfish offered this last remnant to the last waiting crayfish, who took the skin, donned it like a Halloween cape, and dashed toward his hole with a fleetness that seemed powered by joy.
And then, of course, the mega-crayfish dismantled itself, pinching off its legs, unraveling its innards, and collapsing, finally, in a rubble of black exoskeleton, yellow blood and emerald guts. I expect this ritual has been observed by countless generations of country boys who give it no more thought than they might give to the birth of a calf or a bat caught in a sister’s hair, but I must say, coming upon this gruesome spectacle with no warning of what was about to occur . . . it was unsettling, to say the least.
Perhaps it was the mega-crayfish’s nature to tear itself apart; perhaps it was born to dissect and, lacking a subject, dissected itself. The analogy is easy, almost too easy: We human creatures deconstruct the universe and are left in the rubble of our fears, our mortality, our rags of faith.
I was pleased with that passage, and if Audrey had seen me at that moment, she might have said, as was her wont, “You look like you’ve just won the lottery.”
But Audrey was nowhere around. She was probably upstairs reading in bed. I went outside and sat in the rocking chair and looked at the stars (Hopkins’s “fire-folk sitting in the air”) and thought that there were a lot of them in Pennsylvania, and I thought about how I might become very famous and hounded by fans. I might have to hire security guards or at least get a dog although I wasn’t sure about getting a fierce dog because what if it began looking at me funny, started growling deep in its throat?
I sent the future marching, took a deep breath and rocked in the moment. I noticed that the night was very still. All the world’s raucous frogs were silent, not a peep.
As the days continued to pass, the exploits of my crayfish kept feeding my essay, and it grew to an unwieldy size. It was beginning to show its ignorance, by which I mean that my lack of scientific knowledge regarding these crustaceans was becoming a problem. No doubt there was a scientific term for what I called a meld. And what was occurring when two crayfish fought and the loser erupted in flames? The power of the image suggested a host of wonderful references throughout history and literature, but if I knew the mechanism—some volatile chemical released in defeat?—I could speak with more authority, send a telling anecdote or literary reference straight to the heart of the matter.
I needed to read up on crayfish. My decision was made on a Thursday evening after dinner. Scanning the phone book, which contained four counties and was still thinner than a copy of The New Yorker, I discovered—I confess I was surprised—a library in our very town. I thought it might still be open.
The parking lot was empty and dark, and the library, a small, shed-like building, appeared abandoned, although a closer inspection revealed a pale gleam of yellow light edging from beneath the window’s drawn shade. I went to the door, turned the knob, and entered. An elderly woman sitting behind her desk jerked her head up as though she had been caught dozing.
“I can summon the police with a touch of a button, young man. There’s nothing here but library fines, less than five dollars, not worth the loss of your freedom and good name.”
I told her that I was seeking a book about crayfish.
“There are people who eat them,” she said. Being a librarian, I suppose she felt obligated to contribute her knowledge on the subject.
“Not me,” I said and waited for her to help with the search. She returned with two books, one entitled, The Flora and Fauna of Western Pennsylvania and the other a children’s book entitled What’s Under That Rock?
I checked out both books after filling out a library card application that was three pages long and expected me to know things like my mother’s maiden name. I lied and got through it and made off with the books.
I intended to retire to the study and read these books immediately, but I saw the message light on the answering machine blinking, and so I pushed the play button and Audrey’s voice jumped out. “Jonathan! When you get this, I’ll be on my way to the coast with Dr. Bath and his wife. The quantum actualization of the brood wheel has come to us in a vision. It will bloom near San Clemente, and so we are on our way. These other manifestations are important, but they are not the blooming. You can be of use where you are. Please tend to my garden. We will meet again in celebration and the making of fine multiples.”
I went into the kitchen, fumbled in the cupboards, and found the bottle of Gilbey’s gin. It was my fault she’d left. I’d been neglecting her, lost in my damned essay about those damned crayfish. Neglected, she had fled into a crackpot religion. I should have seen it coming; the signs were there. I mixed the gin with a lemony diet drink that tasted awful. That was fine; I deserved it. Later I walked out into the yard and through the meadow and into the woods. I carried a flashlight and my backpack and trusted the familiarity of the route. There was a full moon, and I was drunk enough to fear no night thing.
I entered the clearing without incident, but I must have drifted from my habitual path, for a resilient sapling caught my leg and threw me to the ground. I turned my flashlight, and the beam revealed a silver rod growing out of the grass. I reached forward and touched the rod and as I gripped it, it began to slide down into itself. This wasn’t at all like a sapling, and I studied the rod, pulling it up and then forcing it down again. It was a telescoping antenna. I retrieved my spade from the backpack and dug around the antenna, striking something hard. I brushed away the dirt to reveal a flat metal surface just under the ground. It took me well over two hours to unearth most of the truck’s cab. The cab was full of dirt—and Bob. There was black dirt in Bob’s mouth, black dirt in his eye sockets. His hands still clutched the wheel, ready to go but . . . You lost the war, I thought, a stupid thought. I was feeling a little ill, and it didn’t help, my staring at the grass which grew undisturbed over what had to be the larger bulk of the truck. How did you get there, Bob?
I heard the new sound, a sound that did not resonate with loss but seemed joyous, playful, exuberant. I crawled into the thicket and took my station. The full moon provided more than enough illumination, but I could have seen them without it, for each crayfish was enveloped in a pale green glow. They were running in and out of a fine spray of mist, for all the world like children squealing and frolicking in the spray of a hose or water sprinkler. I recognized the source of the spray, Bob’s deadly canister of poison. Three of the crayfish operated it from its dug-in position high in the bank, while a dozen or more raced in and out of the toxic mist.
As always, I was entranced, and I might have crouched there watching them for hours, but something moved behind them, a shadow that shifted and, for a moment, eclipsed the moon and flooded my heart with terror. I scrambled out of the thicket, stood upright, and ran.
I stumbled through the woods, crashing into trees, toppling over logs, but always up again and moving. The meadow left me unprotected; I imagined malevolent eyes watching me from above. I ran.
I reached the porch as my stomach cramped. I eased myself down on the first porch step and blinked at the silvered grass, the meadow and the trees beyond. The spinning world wobbled to a stop as I caught my breath. Peace reigned; the stars were noncommittal and the breeze was warm and quick with the promise
of spring. I glanced down at Audrey’s garden and thought of going after her, but Audrey wouldn’t like that. No, time would have to bring her back to me . . . the fullness of time (a phrase that seemed suddenly sinister; I saw this monstrous thing, bloated with the eons it had devoured).
No going after Audrey. Hadn’t she charged me with the care of her garden? She had taken pains with this project, covering the ground with plastic sheets to protect the new shoots from the vicissitudes of the season. I stood up and regarded one of the sheets. I looked over my shoulder, but nothing was coming. I knelt down and peeled back the sheet and saw rows of neatly ordered little plants, white buds with blue. . . . No. My mind was forced to swallow the image, but it had no response ready-made. Indeed, my first reaction was to laugh abruptly, which really wasn’t appropriate. What I saw were rows of little blue eyeballs, naked, unblinking, incredulous. I had never seen a garden that looked so very, very surprised.
I had no time to pursue that thought, for I turned again, prompted by a trumpeting roar that rattled my heart in its cage. The thing was silhouetted against the moon, its ragged wings outstretched, strange tentacles dangling from its black bulk, tentacles long enough to trail across the meadow as though trolling the amber waves.
I am locked in my room now, devising a plan or preparing to devise a plan or, perhaps, simply eating this bag of potato chips and reading. When all is said and done, I enjoy reading far more than writing. Not that I’m very fond of The Flora and Fauna of Western Pennsylvania. It has no pictures and it has that shiny paper that I associate with textbooks and the prose is almost impenetrable, and you know what? I’m an adult, and I don’t have to read it if I don’t want to. Hah.
Well, What’s Under That Rock? is a great improvement. For one thing, it has pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words. There’s a picture of a crayfish in this book.
Something is on the roof . . . make that in the attic. The noise doesn’t conjure a clear picture in my mind. Visualize a half dozen sailors, brawling while someone tortures a pig. No. I think you have to be here to fully appreciate this sound.
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird Page 41