The Optimistic Decade

by Heather Abel

  Someone tapped Caleb’s back, and he turned around. “What’s he even sa-ying?” Shauna’s trademark whine. “I can’t understa-and.”

  “Shh.” Caleb turned back to see Donnie pull his hand from his pocket and hold it in front of himself, as if he wanted to keep an eye on it. It was trembling. The hand with the book kept hitting against his thigh.

  “A custom and a culture. And the custom and culture of the West is the people who grow things here, who grow oil shale and cows and not treat it like Disney World for the rich tourists.”

  The throttle of the dishwashers started up inside the kitchen. Nat and Caitlin arrived from the infirmary teepee, waving at everyone. “What’d I miss?” Nat said loudly. “Is it the guy from the Forest Service for the fire safety talk?”

  “I can’t hear what he’s saying,” someone shouted.

  “Me either.”

  “And then,” Donnie continued, mumbling the crucial nouns, “when . . . took away our livelihood . . . That’s when . . . shows up and pretends he’s a journalist. So the very foundation, the bottom of . . . is built on a lie. He was in on it from the start.”

  Caleb stood. He could feel the campers turn to him.

  Donnie ignored him. “But I learned from him.” He held up the booklet, its cover a waving flag with taking back our land in gold foil. Caleb couldn’t see the author’s name, but certainly this was Hobart R. Billings, Esq. “That if you buy something under false pretenses, it’s considered a fraud—fraudulent—by the United States of America, and you can get any lawyer—any lawyer—to back you up and get your land back.”

  Caleb stepped toward him. “Really nice of you to come by and talk to us. We need to let the kids go up now.”

  “Wait, I’m not . . .” Donnie drew himself up so that he was tall and focused, and he said, clearly and slowly, keeping his gaze on Caleb, “Motherfucker. Motherfucker. Motherfucker.” The arm holding the book was raised in the air, and he punched his hand and the booklet forward with each “fucker.”

  “Okay, okay. We hear you,” Caleb said, in a tone that implied they were all joking. “Let’s rein in the language.”

  Now the kids were quiet and curious. Jeremy leapt up and then Jamal, the two of them standing among the kids like quivers in a bow, ready to be manly and protective.

  “It’s okay,” Caleb said. “He’s leaving. He’s said his piece and he’s leaving.”

  But Donnie didn’t leave. “You don’t get to steal this and get away with it.” He spoke more audibly now that he was turned from the audience and addressing Caleb directly.

  Caleb felt the pump of his own frightened heart. He wasn’t sure how to intervene. And then, he didn’t need to. A baby was crying.

  The sound was as unusual on this high desert as the howl of a wolf. Don, walking toward them, held the source, a small thing in a pink sleeper. His hands were crossed around her belly, and she was trying to fly from his chest, to leap from his restraint. Her legs were peddling, her arms were thrust forward, her face a red scream.

  “She doesn’t know me yet,” Don said over the noise. “She was wanting you.”

  In a moment that seemed too fast for a bodily transfer, she was in Donnie’s arms, his shirt in her fists, her forehead bumping over and over against his shoulder.

  “I couldn’t get her to nap,” Don said. “She cried if I set her down. Worse if I picked her up.”

  Donnie frowned down at the baby, as if wanting to put her somewhere. Instead, he jostled a bit, and she quieted. Still heaving, she turned to look solemnly at Caleb. Sweat pressed her yellow hair against her scalp. Caleb was struck by the confidence of Donnie’s hands on her, and also of the child’s grip on her dad, the complete exclusionary embrace.

  “Come,” Don said. “You and Caleb can talk later.”

  “She’s hungry,” Donnie said accusingly to Caleb, as if he had been withholding her nourishment, and then Donnie walked the baby around the crowd, past the barn. Don followed a few paces behind.

  Caleb watched them go. The baby had robbed something from him. The baby had thwarted Caleb’s chance to put Donnie in his place, to restore reason and logic, to explain that there were no lies, just time moving on, cultures changing, legal transfers of land. Caleb clenched his hands, his adrenaline soaring with no outlet. He still felt like he was about to lose something.

  He looked at Suze, who sat watching him expectantly, her arms around her legs like a young girl. She was still here. Caleb wouldn’t think of Donnie anymore. Donnie was gone. He wouldn’t think of Donnie for the rest of this day so that he could focus on Suze. With that decision made, he began to speak to his camp in his gentle way, thinking, as he often did when he made speeches, of Suze listening. And she really was.

  He began by saying thank you to the campers. “Thanks for sitting quietly and listening to that man with me. Thank you.” He decided not to refute anything Donnie had said or mention him by name. They could all wonder: That guy, the one with the trembling hands and the baby, what was he talking about?

  “Sometimes, some people, they just need to be listened to,” he said. “So many people in the world are never listened to. I’m sure you’ve had that feeling once in a while. You’re trying to get your mom’s attention, but there’s your little brother, and she’s only looking at him. Well, some people, these people, they feel like that all the time. They feel like nobody ever hears them. You know the people I’m talking about. You pass them on park benches on your way to the playground. You see them at bus stops. And mostly, we don’t listen. We go about our day. We’re in a hurry. But it’s different at Llamalo, isn’t it?” He paused. He was still shaking, his whole body like an aspen leaf, but he wouldn’t let on. He was the incantor, the reciter, and he crouched down so that they couldn’t see him shake.

  “We’re not hurrying here. We have time to let someone talk to us. Time to listen. Even if we don’t really understand what he’s saying.” There was a scattering of laughter. “Even if it’s the very middle of the hottest day of summer.” More laughter. “And when we do that—when you do that—when you listen to someone who needs it so badly, it’s a gift. A real gift. You should feel proud of yourselves today. Okay? Alright. Everyone’s exhausted. It couldn’t be hotter if it tried. Go on all of you. Get some rest. I’ll see you at the river.”

  There was a burble of excitement among the counselors crowded around the pigeonholes on the side of the barn. Weird. Who was he? Maybe Don and Denise’s kid? Did you see how scared he looked? I’m sorry, I thought it was kinda . . . I know, me too . . . Funny? But that baby, she had lungs. And then their attention drifted down to the mail they were shuffling through acquisitively. Kai held up an envelope sent by her boyfriend back in Santa Cruz so that everyone could see the gnar-gnar surfers he’d drawn. Jamal owed fines on six books at his college’s sci-li. The encroachments of another life.

  Rebecca had her own distraction. From the barn, there was no way to reach the footbridge without passing David. And David was talking to Caleb and Suze.

  Suze was clearly a calamity, the type of woman whose very presence reminded everyone of the standard of desire. When she’d appeared at lunch, Rebecca had almost heard a collective sigh on the mesa: Oh, right, right. Beauty! Her symmetry exposed asymmetry around her. Beside her, Rebecca would be revealed as simply wrong. Why this oversized ANC shirt, and what dribble had formed its brown stain? What were these large flowered jean shorts with the pleats bagging out? Why were her hairy legs so hairy? Had she really thought anyone would find that seductive?

  As if it might make her unnoticeable, she looked away from the threesome as she passed by, but this caused her to stumble on the threshold of the bridge, clutching on to her passel of mail and thumping heavily onto the wooden boards, which attracted their attention anyway. Caleb called, “Hey, Rebecca, come on over here! Have you met Suze?”

  It was awful to have to stand so close to her and invite the inevitable comparisons, but Rebecca took the hand outstretched to her. Cool,
small. She saw Suze’s eyes twitch up and down her body, wondering, clearly, why Caleb had singled her out for introductions. The men gazed like idiots at Suze. Even Rebecca couldn’t turn away from her.

  “Rebecca’s my cousin. First time here this summer.”

  A look of comprehension passed over Suze, and she released Rebecca’s hand to hit her excitedly on the arm. “Serious?” She squinted. “I can’t really see the resemblance. I mean, there’s the Jewish thing.”

  There was that. She had all of Caleb’s nose, none of his charm.

  “She looks a lot like my dad, actually.”

  “So wait, that means, your dad’s brother’s kid,” Suze said to Caleb, her eyes narrowing with recall. Turning to Rebecca, she said, “The radical newspaper, right? What was his name? Ivan?” She appraised Rebecca with a wrinkle between her eyes. Rebecca could feel the appeal of being the recipient of Suze’s skittish enthusiasm; already, she wanted more.

  “Can’t believe you remember that,” Caleb said with a proud smile, as if he’d been paid a compliment. Rebecca had never before seen him so obviously trying to please.

  “Ira, actually,” Rebecca said, but nobody looked at her.

  “I’m an elephant. I can’t forget anything. I still know the phone number of my best friend in seventh grade. Five two oh, one three one five. And her sister’s birthday is April tenth. It’s a morass of unimportant details up here.” Suze affected one of those ugly expressions that, in pretty people, only serve to emphasize their inability to actually embody ugliness.

  “The combination to my high school locker? Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-eight,” she continued, further cheapening the significance of her ability to remember Caleb’s family.

  Mikala ran up to the group, her face blotchy with sun rash. “Who was that guy? He looked familiar.”

  Rebecca saw Caleb and Suze exchange a look. “God, absolutely nobody,” Suze said. “Mikala! You’re so gorgeous. Let me spend rest hour with you.” Turning to David, she reached tenderly for his arm, a public ease with him that Rebecca wouldn’t dare, and she felt the inner yelp of possession. “I want to know everything about you. Promise you’ll tell me later?” Suze said, releasing David and grabbing Mikala’s arm to run across the bridge in a girlish flaunt of best-friendhood.

  “You should go up, too,” Caleb said, turning to Rebecca and David with sudden impatience, as if they’d been dawdling, shirking.

  Rebecca walked briskly ahead.

  “Rebecca?” David said when they’d crossed the bridge.

  “Can’t talk here.”

  He came up beside her. “I’m pretty sure it’s still legal for me to greet you.”

  “So, Suze. What’s her deal anyway?”

  “You’ll love her. She’s . . . uh, extraordinary, actually. As in not ordinary. I can’t even explain.”

  The inexplicable was beauty, blondeness, an economy of flesh, a perkiness of breasts, a lack of “the Jewish thing.” But she wouldn’t teach David that. What she’d thought was sexy had been foolish. She walked faster. “Wow. High praise.”

  “Hey, are you mad at me or something?”

  She wanted his weight on her again. No, that wasn’t true. She wanted him pressed against the straw this time. Lie down, David. She wanted one leg on either side of him, to be atop him. “Mad at you? Who’s mad?” She was surprised to find these words came out in precisely the same defensively embittered tone Georgia used with Ira. “I just need to be alone.”

  “Is it something I said?”

  “No.”

  “Something I did?”

  “I said it’s nothing.”

  “Because if it’s about that time, the barn, would you just tell me?”

  They reached the Y in the path: girls’ platforms to the right, boys’ to the left. She stopped. “It’s not about the barn.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Because I was kind of really wanting to go back there this afternoon.” He reached out and dragged one finger down the length of her arm. “Maybe you could finally tell me all the news from Our Side Now. What is the cover story this week?”

  “I’ll see if I can catch you up.” The word “catch” was suddenly suggestive.

  Once she reached her platform, Rebecca distributed letters to the lucky girls, curled on mats like puppies. In a haze of happiness, she lay down on her own, reaching over the side to dredge the newspaper from her backpack, an act that seemed nearly sexual, continuing a joking foreplay with David. Since she’d carried it with her for weeks, the paper had acquired the softness of an already-read paper. It occurred to her that her parents had sent her only this one issue and then stopped, as if they’d known she wouldn’t read it. As if they’d known she’d just lie here and think of David.

  She opened to the Publisher’s Note, which was, to be honest, the only part of the paper she consistently read. Scratched off in the hours before the paper went to press, it was chatty, a close approximation of her father actually talking to her.

  Dear Friends,

  How many of you have been with Our Side Now since 1971? Nineteen years ago, when we wrote the first issue, our daughter was a newborn; now, she’s just finished her first year of college. Our Side Now is heading out of adolescence.

  For the first decade or so as editor and publisher, I felt, and I may have been entitled to feel, vaguely self-congratulatory, attributing to the efforts of this newspaper a faint but palpable upswing in activism. Our readers wrote to thank us for alerting them to threats from privatization and unchecked capitalism. You asked for more articles about the gradual—and not so gradual—demolition of public education, health care, affordable transportation, public lands, immigrant rights, and decent wages for all. My assumption was simple: Devote enough column inches to the topic, and justice would come.

  Today that strikes me as a particularly narcissistic delusion. Look around. Eight years of articles about Reagan led only to the election of Bush, who now threatens war against Iraq. The legacy of civil rights is starvation in South Central. We still pat ourselves on the back for ending the war in Vietnam, and yet we do nothing about the sickening accumulation of nuclear warheads, about an economy dependent on appalling gaps between rich and poor. We speak, but nothing happens.

  My friends, we have done something wrong.

  In an attempt to stop pretending that I’m having any impact on the horrors of our world, I’m shutting down Our Side Now. This will be the last issue you receive.

  Ira

  She was surprised at the stillness around her. All her childhood she’d known cataclysm was approaching—the blast of a nuclear bomb or at least the inevitable LA earthquake, her pink stucco house crumbling, the palm tree falling. It turned out, her world would end with the faint rustle of newspaper. She wanted more than anything to go back to the moment before she’d read the letter.

  Tanaya draped her arm off her mattress and let The Baby-Sitter’s Club #5,000 drop on the wooden floor. “I’m bored. Read to us, Rebecca.”

  “Read to us, read to us,” Rebecca’s girls began chanting. She’d been reading to them about Ishi, who was currently midway on his long trek from prehistory to modernity.

  “No. I can’t today.”

  “But you always read to us. We’re bo-red. We’re bo-red.”

  Their complaint was so naïve. Boredom? Rebecca closed her eyes and thought, Well, this is what it feels like to be old.

  Caleb stood in the doorway of his yurt, surveying. The floor was covered with carpet samples the size of prayer rugs. Pale pink with green roses, mottled beige, gray vines with leaves like mold. Two by two, he carried them outside, slapping them against the edge of the wooden platform. They exhaled dust, but that wasn’t enough.

  He squatted and dug his fingers into the fur and frantically began to pull up hair, which resisted, just like pulling hair from a head, having enjoyed its second life in the scalp of the carpet. He raked out sunflower seeds and toenail clippings, mud, oats. He pulled and pulled, but he was still tremb
ling. The aftershocks of Donnie’s visit.

  A whole series of questions lined up in his mind, awaiting his attention. Had Don in fact been sick, or had he known Donnie was coming? Did Don bring the baby to stop Donnie, or was the baby in serious distress? Did Don believe that Caleb had been in the Motherlode calling Don a redneck, or did he remember that Caleb had been, at the time, in the kitchen making an ass of himself—Kiva! Keer! In short, was Don still his friend?

  But no. He wouldn’t think of the Talcs. He pulled the blanket from his mattress, exposing a sheet stained from nights with Kai. He flipped the sheet upside down, smoothed the blanket over. He saw hope, which had been a newborn two hours ago, toddling around the shorn floor, clapping its fat hands. He thought, She’ll sleep here tonight.

  The reason Suze left all those years ago was such a small one. She didn’t “feel it” anymore. This had never made sense to him. You couldn’t love Llamalo, as she clearly did, and then turn off this love, grow numb to the place. And yet, apparently this had happened to her the summer of 1985.

  After the kids left, Suze took a weekend kayak trip down the Green with a counselor named Steve. She called Caleb from the Denny’s in Moab. She told him that she’d counted seventeen bald eagles and four great blue herons. She told him that she might not be into dedicating her whole life to austerity. She actually couldn’t stand another winter in Escadom. She wanted to see other humans. Caleb had reminded her that there were indeed humans in Escadom. “Humans like me,” she’d countered. “Humans who want to eat decent Mexican food. Humans I can be friends with.” She was, she said, moving to Crested Butte with Steve.

  Now she missed him like a phantom limb. Caleb shoved his laundry in a bag, tossed a novel on his bed. A mixtape was already in the player. Hope entered the preteen years, years of substitutions: boys instead of ponies, girls instead of comics, TV for parents, the real Suze for the remembered one.

  twelve

  Down by the Riverside

  Rebecca’s campers observed all their usual rituals on the thirty-minute hike to the river. They cut through the Sorgers’ fields, jumping over black irrigation tubes, screaming, “Snake, snake.” They ran down the trail that Caleb had built on the steep slope of the cliff; the rumor was that this was the path Aemon had originally taken. They avoided the rottweiler belonging to the man who squatted in an abandoned miner’s shack. They jumped the train tracks with a scream, as if a coal train were bearing down on them. They sang as Rebecca had taught them: Ain’t gonna study war no more. I ain’t gonna study war no more. I ain’t gonna stu-dy war no more, no more, no . . .