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Elsie stood on the little crest of rock running behind the sheep barn. The dust and sagebrush stretched around her forever. It seemed impossible to her that anything lay beyond that immensity, that somewhere, thousands of miles beyond the gray line of the horizon, her own parents were probably sitting on their tidy white porch, watching the Atlantic Ocean slap against the shore. That part of the world was gone to her now, except for the letters that came once a week. When Elsie stood there, she saw only dirt stretching for mile after filthy mile.
She wiped her hands on her apron as she scanned the undulating fields, her lips tightening when she caught the finger of dust pointing up from the west quarter. After noon and he wasn't even halfway through the big wheat field. That tractor must be acting up again.
The apron twisted around her fingers. They owed over five hundred dollars on the tractor, and just thinking about the sum made her stomach hurt. They hadn't yet found the money to put a pump in the well or finish the house, but they did own the newest, most powerful tractor in all of Lincoln County. She couldn’t have a washing machine, but they could have a new tractor that seemed to need repairs just as often as an old one.
Elsie smoothed the muslin apron out over her hips. Her fingers hurt. The dry air sucked the moisture out of everything, flesh and earth alike. Her skin split and bled and the tiny wheat plants sagged. About the only things that thrived in this country were hard-headed men and rattlesnakes. She eyed the finger of dust and turned her back on it.
At the bottom of the hill, beyond the short stretch of rocks and abandoned fence posts, beyond the sheep barn, the house and chicken coop sat side by side—the first hardly larger than the second. Dust storms had scoured the milk paint she'd laid on last spring, so that now the gray boards showed through like fingerprints beneath a layer of hand cream. The front door hung open.
Anger boiled behind her eyes even as fear whipped up behind it like a striking snake. That little brat. That stupid little brat. He knew he wasn't supposed to go outside by himself.
I push myself away from Grandma Elsie's angry voice. The virulence in it makes my gut roil. This isn't the grandma who wiped the tears off my face when my dad whipped me for crying over a dead rose bush. This woman is a stranger.
My legs wobble as I take few steps forward, blinking away the past. I don't want to go back into it. I try to focus my eyes on my father. Just ahead of me, he struggles up the rocky hill, his legs bowed into toddler shape again by time and knee injuries. His feet have to take small steps, their shape rounded by the black sneakers secured with Velcro tabs. Once he wore only cowboy boots, shiny ones for going out, worn ones for working.
He's not much like the great big man who raised my brothers and me. That man stood tall and straight and looked down at me with sharp black eyes. Now I am taller than him. I could hurt him without even trying.
This time the land doesn't just knock me down, it collapses beneath me, the stones shifting beneath me to form a shallow cup. Stone grinds into my knees and my palms. The land's voice is a roar in my ear. I can see Elsie's feet in their sturdy brogues beside me. Why does the land want me to see this so badly? Why do I need to know?
I push myself upright, thinking hard. At the time Elsie was looking for her son, the Japanese were still a threat. Planes were still bombing London. One hundred and fifty miles south of Elsie's homestead, engineers were finishing the nuclear production complex that would brew the bulk of the United States's plutonium, and power the bombs that would drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although her brother had joined the Army, her focus was on her home and her family. And while my grandfather’s bad knee had kept him out of the war, that didn’t mean Grandma had time to stand around listening to the news. She had her hands full running a household and keeping up with a mischievous boy like my father, who at this age was a good walker and a not-so-good user of the potty. He would refuse to wear shoes until he was eight years old.
The brogues pass by me and then I am in Elsie's head again. I can see and smell and taste the world of seventy years ago.
"Jack?" Grandmother Elsie called. Her voice is pure steel. "Come here this instant!"
But he didn't come. He never did. The anger tightened her eyelids. It had been coming faster these days, ready to leap into her forehead with the steady pulse of some primitive drum. The headache it inspired made her want to retch.
"Jack!"
Even the chickens went quiet.
The pressure on her eyeballs obscured her vision. Memory filled it instead, an image from her last bad wave of temper. Jack's hair, sleeked down around his face in dripping tendrils.
"What have you done this time, Jack?" She rushed forward, stumbling over the hummocks of bunch grass and pungent-smelling sagebrush, and forced herself to slow down. It seemed impossible that a little boy could be so quiet, not when he spent all his waking hours banging and crashing all over the house. His handprints clung tenaciously to every surface, resisting any combination of cleaners she tried.
She didn't want to get angry with him, but at some point he'd become defiant, almost gleefully intractable. Every day he was more of a little savage. If there was a dirty, disgusting, or rude activity, he found it. The more dangerous, the better. If he survived this stage, it would be from sheer luck.
Her eyes jumped to the wooden square of the well cover and the rusty water pump, standing out like a bright orange spoke of life in the gray expanse of yard. The enameled washtub sat placidly beneath it. Around the edges of the well cover, a few sprigs of green clung, bits of vegetation hungry for moisture. No boy.
"Jack?" Her voice rang out sharp and taut in the dry air. She broke into a jog and ran through her list of the boy's favorite playthings and hidey-holes. Maybe the dog house. He loved to play in the dog house.
My father's big white dog pushes her head into my side. I can’t quite see her through the haze of the past, but I stroke her fur gratefully. There is something wrong with this memory. Elsie's memory of Jack's face, all wet and dripping—it frightens me. The dog licks my cheek.
I wrap my arm around her neck as the earth buffets me with another blast of the past.
Elsie stooped to peer inside the dog house. A cacophony of barking emerged and the border collies' black and white heads jammed in the doorway. Smelly things. She usually only paid attention to them to feed them. Surprised and pleased, they attacked her with their floppy tongues. One managed to squeeze out the door and rub itself against her leg.
"Where's Jack, dog?"
It pricked up its ears and pointed its nose toward the chicken coop. Elsie's lips tightened. She should have thought of the nesting boxes first. He liked to hold the eggs. Like to "help" gather them. And most of all, he liked pulling the chicken's tail feathers. His roughness could put them off laying a few days, and the family couldn't afford to miss out on those eggs. Who could afford meat when there was rationing?
"Jack Mueller, you get out of that chicken house this second!'
The chicken coop door burst open and he darted out, giggling. With a happy bark, the dog broke into a run. The anger-drumming started in Elsie's head, louder than it had been even the day he'd smeared peanut butter all over the green davenport her parents had sent her as a wedding present.
She remembered Oh god, I don't want to remember this—please stop—the bubbles rising up out of the wash tub, furious at first and then slower, the stink of wet peanut butter filling her nose. She'd had to wash him. Had to. The words repeated again, to the beat of the anger drum: had to. Had to. Had to.
The sight of Jack toddling around the corner of the chicken yard mercifully turns off Elsie's uglier memory. But I can feel her clench her jaw.
No child belonged in the no man's land between the chicken yard and the rock ridge, although it must have looked like paradise to a little boy. Small boulders and weeds vied for their share of sun and soil. During the summer, grasshoppers overran the place. Sometimes a pygmy bunny would r
ace across the ground, headed from one patch of safe browsing to the next, hurrying to outrun the hawks and rattlesnakes. She felt like a bunny herself today. She had been running from one chore to another, stopping to clean up after Jack when she could, and then she'd taken one minute to check on her husband, one short minute, and the boy had gone and made a worse mess.
Thoughts of rabbit holes and black widow spiders and a dozen kinds of snakes (sweet, merciful Jesus, even rattlers) made her break into a run. "Jack, you just stop where you are!"
The black-and-white dog cut across the boy's path, stopping him in his tracks. "Good dog," Elsie called. She hopped over a pile of fence posts and laid her hand on the dog's back. "Good dog."
Beneath her palm, she felt the dog's heat and its steady breathing. It breathed faster than she did, nearly the same speed as a child did. She put her other hand on Jack's shoulder. A layer of grit coated both boy and dog.
The boy twisted away and broke into a trot. He giggled as he ran, an infuriatingly high-pitched chime that brought back the pulsing in her head.
"Come on, now," she snapped, but then the dog growled.
A thin dry rattle sounded in response. The boy stopped in his tracks.
"Jack," Elsie said. "Come here." She could see the snake now, curled on a slab of sandstone not a foot away from Jack.
The boy dropped into a squat and peered down at the snake. The snake rattled a second warning. Snarling, the dog launched itself forward. The snake arced upright, its bronze head flashing. The dog gave a startled yip and pulled its front paw close to its torso.
"Jack!" Elsie shrieked. She launched herself at the boy and grabbed him by the back of the overalls. They tumbled sideways.
The dog snarled again and leaped. It teeth closed just behind the snake's head and crunched down. The snake went limp. The dog dropped it and sat down. Its good front leg trembled, and its injured paw twitched.
"Good dog," Elsie whispered. The dog whimpered. It stretched out on its side and rubbed its muzzle in the dirt. She wasn't sure how much time it had left, but it was in terrible pain. She'd go back to the house for the shotgun, but they'd run out of shot three weeks ago and hadn't had the cash to buy more.
The dog cried out, a sound so human Elsie flinched. She thrust the boy behind the stack of fence posts and snatched one up.
"You poor dumb dog."
It spasmed in the dirt. She gave the post an experimental heft. She'd been killing chickens since she was a kid. Had shot plenty of coyotes. And this, well, this was mercy, wasn't it?
She swung the fencepost as hard as she could. The dog screamed. The fencepost came down again. The dog bucked and twisted. Dirt sprayed in every direction, covered her shoes. It didn't matter. She had to finish what she started.
"Doggy!" Jack screamed.
She slammed the fencepost down and something squelched beneath it. Elsie stumbled backward.
Last week, when she'd pulled Jack out of the washtub, his clothes had squelched like that. His clothes had made noise but he hadn't and that's when she'd realized that she'd done something wrong. His black hair clung to his forehead and ropes of water ran down from his bangs, his dark eyelashes. His lips looked blue. That's when the drumming slowed. Those little blue lips, no longer peanut buttery brown. She'd gotten lucky that time. So lucky.
Elsie dropped the fencepost. Behind her, Jack made a tiny whimper. A pinkish pulp clung to the end of the fencepost.
"He was sick," she explained. "The doggy was hurt real bad." The words sounded hollow in her aching head. "I had to do it, sweetie. I had to."
The boy popped his thumb into his mouth and stared up at her with flat ink-dark eyes.
"Oh, Jack," she whispered. She lifted him out of the sagebrush and gravel and hugged him to her chest. He kept his back straight, not even blinking at her.
The boy gripped her torso stiffly, not clinging but simply keeping his balance. He did not snuggle into her shoulder as he might have a few months ago. He did not kiss her cheek. He turned his head to look over her shoulder. His chubby finger pointed. "Airplane."
Elsie craned her neck and watched the big warbird pass overhead. A hot rage boiled up in her stomach. She dropped Jack to the ground.
“Goddamn Japs! Goddamn you slant-eyed sons of bitches!”
She snatched up a stone and threw it into the sky.
And I saw it then, the scrap of memory hidden beneath the peanut butter and water and the quiet, soaking wet toddler. A piece of paper sitting on that green davenport. A telegram.
I gasp for air, and the air is ordinary, dusty Eastern Washington air. The past is invisible again. I cover my eyes for a second, too overwhelmed to even cry. I feel heavy, as if I've swallowed a slab of stone. How many stories like this has this land witnessed? How much truth can this dust hold?
Grandmother Elsie's brother died in the war. Me, heartless grandchild that I was, I forgot that terrible fact, but I don't think she ever let go of it. Whenever anyone Asian came on tv, she would leave the room. She once told me we should have sent a hundred, a thousand more bombs. It was the only time I ever heard cruelty in my sweet grandmother's voice.
I pull myself to my feet and hurry to catch up with my father. The dog runs ahead of me, kicking up little mushroom clouds of dirt with her oversized paws.
“You all right?” he asks. He doesn't turn to look at me. His eyes are scanning the land.
I stroke the dog and study the fields beyond. They were once my granddad's fields, but now a big agricultural company owns them. They can afford to irrigate until the wheat is a slick, plump green. It's just about impossible for a family farm to stay in business these days. My father couldn't afford to live here if it weren't for his Social Security check.
"Dad?” I hesitate. “I've got bad news, Dad. Alan…Alan's dead. He shot himself a week ago." The words spill out, dry, dusty, just the unembroidered facts.
Dad's mouth opens. Closes. He stays silent a long time, and I wonder if he is thinking all the things I thought when I got the news. But of course he hasn't seen Alan in years. I am the only one of us who calls or visits my father.
He puts his hand on the dog's shoulder and stares out beyond those fence lines. His face hangs in heavy lines that look deeper than I've seen them. He blinks hard. "Was there a funeral?"
"Yesterday," I admit. Alan's husband had organized things very quickly.
He sighs, the air rattling in his throat. He still hasn't looked at me. It's as if the land out there is holding him up. "Those damn ragheads," he says. "He wasn't ever the same after they sent him into the desert."
I realize I'm taking shallow breaths, that my legs wobble. After all these years, my instincts are still waiting for my dad to hit me when I say the wrong thing. I dig my fingers into the dog's thick hair. But he doesn't see it, just like he never saw that Alan was broken long before he joined the Army.
"Looks good, don't it?" he asks. The green fields only stretch so far. Sagebrush encircles the green hungrily, lapping up the escaped moisture. Everything is thirsty in these scablands, where the soil is too thin to hold moisture and the endless wind drives away the clouds. Out here, every little thing has to fight to survive. "It's sure good-looking country."
His voice is so frail, so small. It is even—and I have to force myself to admit this—sweet. If I didn't know him, I would find him an enchanting little old man. And maybe he is. He's sure not the man I've been hating for the last thirty years. Haven't I seen that with my own eyes? And wasn't Elsie proof that people can change?
"It's beautiful," I agree. I let go of the dog's neck hair. The dog presses her head against my father's knee.
A jet streaks overhead, a black "v" slicing through the cloudless sky. My freed hand closes on my father's and we crane our necks. A little breeze whispers in my ear, soft and satisfied; not a real breeze, but the comforting voice of the land that only I can hear. My father smiles, almost like he can feel it, too.
The
warbird heads west, toward the military base, toward the sea.
TWILIGHT STATE
Gemma Files
In "Twilight State", by Gemma Files, a person undergoes experimental therapy that involves deep sedation—a twilight state. It's a story in which neither the protagonist nor the reader knows who to trust or what is real, and it's a story in which many relationships and locations seem trapped in an in-between space.
The term "twilight state" in medicine refers to a state that can be achieved through drugs, hypnosis, or some medical conditions. In surgery, this term refers to a state in which a patient is anesthetized to the point of being heavily sedated but not fully unconscious. The patient is deeply relaxed but is able to answer questions and perform actions at the surgeon’s request. "Twilight state" usually results in amnesia—the patient can't remember the operation. The advantage of this kind of anesthesia is that it doesn't require breathing tubes and the recovery time is quicker than that of general anesthesia.
In nature, twilight is the time when the sun is below the horizon but its rays continue to illuminate the sky. It's an in-between time, neither night nor day. Similarly, the person in a twilight state is neither awake nor asleep. In mythology, twilight is a particularly magical time, when the border between the mortal and magical world is porous. In either sense, a person in a twilight state is "betwixt and between". This is a time when great truths can be revealed, if not recalled or understood.
***
“You don't have to look directly into the light,” Dr Karr tells me. “In fact, it'd be better if you didn't.”
I nod. “How long will it take?”
“Today? Eight hours, tomorrow six, the day after that four—the whole idea is to start high, then move down by increments. One way or the other, if we see good results at the end of this session or the effects aren't quite up to plan, we'll adjust accordingly.”
Genius Loci Page 10