The Optimistic Decade

by Heather Abel

  He wanted to show them how to find a stream to drink from, but there were no streams— only the moldy green of sagebrush. His water bottle was either half-full or half-empty, depending, and he began to suspect he was walking in a wide circle.

  A few hours later, still walking, he thought about a chicken club with bacon. He heard behind him a rustle that could be mountain lion or rattlesnake. He thought about a hamburger and cheese fries. He would like it with grilled onions. He would like there to be a pink glistening pool of grease veined with ketchup when he finished. He would lean to the plate and put his mouth to this pool, like a hungry bear dipping his head into a pool of snowmelt.

  It was the muddy middle of October; all around him hungry bears were looking for one last meal.

  Just before dark, he came upon a butte or mesa or abutment rising from the flatness. He could barely make out a grove of trees on its ledge; perhaps, finally, this was the base of the mountain. He walked toward it, steadily, without rushing, without running, chanting to himself as he stepped: Look at me, Ma. I am walk-ing, Ca-leb walk-ing, walk-ing Ca-leb.

  And then he began running, fitting between the shrubs, snagging and freeing his coat. Look at me, Ma. I am run-ning, run-ning, run-ning.

  And then he was climbing, and very worried indeed, because Caleb was still Caleb, and the earth slipped out from under him with every step, and the plants he grabbed hold of had tiny thorns.

  At the top, he could see neither the mountain nor his stepdad’s Honda, and the grove of trees was actually just two trees without leaves, so leafless in fact it seemed they were dead and not simply wintering. It seemed they hadn’t had leaves in years, had grown from a seed leafless, had been saplings without leaves, like hairless deer.

  He was surprised to feel, more than terror or exhaustion, the warm flush of envy. All he wanted was to be the kind of man who belonged here, who would know where the hell he was and what to do next. “Just tell me,” Caleb called out. “What am I supposed to do?” But his father, still dead, did not answer.

  seventeen

  The Invitation

  “You’re just planning to let the crud fall on the floor?” Don said during Kayla’s Friday morning nap.

  Donnie was standing barefoot on the back of the couch with a screwdriver to remove the lighting fixture, making his dad feel short and unagile, linoleum-bound—and thus, unable, despite his promises to himself, to let his son be.

  “Look at the mess it already made.”

  Donnie jerked his head, and his body undulated to regain balance. “And what would you recommend doing? Just let it sit up here filthy, like . . . ?”

  Like everything else in this place. The rest of the sentence didn’t need to be uttered. When Donnie had arrived home and set Kayla on the floor, he’d said, “This is how you live?” Denise had taken everything of hers, her herbs and rose soap, the mosaic coffee table, the still life of amber beads and peaches she’d painted. And all the old stuff, all of Pammy’s stuff, had been given to Caleb years ago. “Just a double-wide on the Double L,” Don had joked, but Donnie had turned away, and who could blame him?

  Now, Don coughed and wiped his eyes to make a show of the dust. It was pretty, actually, in its slow fall. Donnie had done nothing wrong, not really. All he’d done was ask every single person in town for a loan, and each one had made a point of telling Don about it. Sorry, Don. You understand. How did Donnie think this would make Don feel? If anyone should help buy back the Talc land, it should be Don. He was fifty-five years old and had nothing to give his son. The shame gripped at him.

  So when Donnie let a screw drop behind the couch cushions, Don didn’t stop himself from yelling, “Great. Now what?” Donnie thudded onto the floor.

  Don chuckled while Donnie stripped the couch, diving for the screw, retrieving pennies sticky with crumbs. He realized with a shock that Denise’s hair would be there, long and black, and suddenly, desperately, he wanted Donnie to find one, to hold it up and ask, “What life have you been living, Dad?”

  But all Donnie said was, “You’re blocking the light.” He couldn’t find the screw and had to climb back on the couch to remove the swinging fixture before it fell.

  “Here, Dad, catch.” Donnie held out a half sphere of clouded glass, the bowl filled with dead bugs, like letters fallen off a page. It was this cockiness that broke something in Don, who these days had to hold on to the sink when he brushed his teeth.

  He didn’t know what happened next. Did he even reach for it?

  Perhaps his fingers didn’t close. The glass dropped onto the orange linoleum and shattered.

  “I’ll sweep.” Donnie jumped off, and Don flinched to see those bare feet and the crystalline winks of glass. But he didn’t say, “Don’t” or “Watch out.”

  Instead, he lit into his son: Didn’t Donnie know that he had no hope of buying back the ranch? Did he think he’d find the money floating in the irrigation ditch? No, he had to embarrass Don by asking all his friends. This was childish behavior. Donnie was still a child. Not like Caleb. Maybe now, Caleb would stay. Caleb was steady. Caleb was dependable. Caleb was a Jew; he understood the value of money. On and on, until Donnie stepped over the splinters on the floor and walked out the door barefoot, holding his new brown cowboy boots by their pull straps, saying he was going into town for the afternoon, telling Don to feed Kayla the prune juice mixed with punch and to use the powder on her rash, leaving Don to think, But I am a father, too.

  Donnie parked in Caleb’s lot, where his dad couldn’t see his car, and walked toward the house. He hadn’t been back up here all week, and it was more a mess than ever. Nobody here, but sweatshirts sprawled on the grass. Mugs on the stairs. On the porch, the military drone of wasps over an open jar of jelly.

  He heard them before he saw them, squawking like migrating geese. When he caught sight of them on the road, he hid in the barn like he’d done as a kid, standing flat against the doorway to watch the outside world from the dimness inside.

  They came like characters in a storybook. Little hairy elfin boy. Bald giant boy, bare-chested except for the straps of a backpack. Sexy black-haired lady in a bikini top. Caleb wasn’t there, just the others.

  They weren’t all Jews. The sexy one looked like she could be from Hawaii. The girl with huge tits was pale as sugar. One of the boys was African or maybe dark Mexican.

  The boys carried tamarisk branches, which was dumb, since if you so much as lay one of those branches down, six plants would grow immediately in that spot. Two girls had their faces hidden behind huge passels of sunflowers. Another gripped a tired bunch of Queen Anne’s and columbine. Finally, he saw the little Jewess, wearing the same shirt as when she’d tried to talk to him. She called to the others, “I’ll get marigolds!” His lucky break.

  She unlatched the garden fence, closed it behind her. Donnie watched her crouch over a fishing tackle box, retrieve clippers, then squat again by a bed of flowers. When the others were across the ditch, out of earshot, he walked up to the fence, pulling down the brown hat he’d bought at Frank’s three days earlier. That’s when he’d bought the snap shirt he was wearing. He was all dressed up like a cowboy again, just like Caleb had asked him to be.

  He grasped the fence with both hands, poked the pointy toe of his new cowboy boot into a diamond of fencing, feeling like an ape up against its cage, although it was technically the girl who was inside the enclosure.

  He didn’t say anything, just let her notice him, those thick eyebrows registering surprise. Was there something he wanted?

  “You grow all that yourself?”

  She earnestly explained that everyone here worked collaboratively, taking the time to define the word in case he was an idiot: “Like, worked together.”

  “I figured someone as pretty as you could make the flowers grow all by yourself.”

  She was quickly flustered, splotches blooming on her cheeks until she was gloriously pink. “Well, no . . . I mean, thanks . . . I mean . . .”

 
“Right here.” He pointed at the bed of yellow and orange flowers. “Right here exactly is where Caleb used to sleep.”

  “He slept in the garden?”

  “Weren’t a garden then, just a field. He made a point of sleeping in the field back when he was a journalist.”

  She shook her head, leaving some strands of black hair caught on her mouth. “Caleb? I don’t think so.”

  “Sure, he was a journalist. Didn’t he tell you about that? He wanted to write an article about me for his paper. He took notes on me for a week, wrote down everything I said.”

  Funny he’d ever believed this story, even at eighteen; it was so obviously false. The girl clearly thought so, too. A whole week writing an article about him? That’s what her face said.

  “Article never appeared, though. I called them once. Strange little newspaper that he worked for. Name was Our Side Now. I got their number and called them maybe a year later and asked them to send me the article about me, but they couldn’t find nothing with my name in it. Funny thing is, at the end of the week interviewing me, he had a change of heart. Left his career as a journalist and bought up my land.”

  “Yeah, no. I think you misheard. He didn’t work there.”

  “Really?” Donnie acted shocked, pushing away from the fence. “Is that so?” As if he’d never figured this out on his own. Still, it was good to have corroboration that Caleb hadn’t bought the land with money he’d made. Why should Donnie pay for it when Caleb hadn’t? When he’d been given money by any number of groups, maybe even by the feds. He’d read about situations like this in the brochures from People for the West! Called an illegal taking. As illegal as it got.

  “Funny thing is, he told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to any of you. I wonder if this is why. Or if maybe there are other things he don’t want me to say. I just keep wondering about that.”

  Then he walked back to his car, even as he could hear her ask, “He told you not to what? Wait. Wait, could you just . . . ?”

  Bright orange, Rebecca told herself. Overlapping petals. She smelled one: Wet dog. “Really feel it. Smell it. Roll it between your fingers,” her math teacher at Samohi had said after coming back from a retreat in Ojai and placing a single raisin on a napkin on each desk. “Have you ever truly tasted a raisin? Use all your senses to live in this moment, this wondrous moment.”

  Although Rebecca had been bored by the raisin then, she tried it now with the marigolds in her hand. The petals against her lips were as soft as . . . petals.

  Caleb was good and brilliant, deserving of her help. This was her very last certainty. She might doubt everything else, but not this. He’d never forbid this man to talk to them. But hadn’t he asked Rebecca to lie about David? Think about the marigold and nothing else.

  The marigold was boring. Pain slipped into the wings of her ribs as she carried the flowers to the Gathering, singing with cheer even she understood as false, You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

  When Donnie didn’t return by midafternoon, Don dropped Kayla and her snacks at Charlene’s and drove to where his bus waited in the Escadom High lot. The girls’ basketball team shoved on, headed for a preseason game in Montrose. The coaches were driving separately, so it was up to Don to maintain order. Good luck to him. Even the kids he’d driven to school every day for years didn’t say, “Hi, Mr. Talc” after not seeing him for a summer. They were too busy chewing gum, fiddling with the radios on their heads, yelling, That’s my seat. Get out of my seat.

  The Mexicans boarded last, eyelids down, not talking. Probably didn’t even understand English. Don had wondered why there were so many more of them these past few years, and Donnie had explained it. Since the enviro-Nazis had shrunk the mines, the only work was shit work, housecleaning and bussing tables, work that was not in our custom or our culture. Work for Mexicans. But to think of Donnie made Don feel ashamed again, and, as he turned onto the highway, he turned his thoughts away from his son.

  All the way to Delta, a Kmart semi was tailgating. His head was hurting a little. He wanted the kids to stop shouting, but he’d learned that if the bus driver screams, “Quiet down,” kids just laugh, even girls.

  Outside Delta, where the mesas opened wide until there were no mesas and just desert, Don saw a flash of nighttime. He pulled to the shoulder and shut off the motor. He watched the Kmart semi pass by. Then he let himself fall against the steering wheel, the way Kayla fell asleep on his shoulder.

  The Gathering was decorated with flowers woven through tamarisk. There was wood in the fire pit, a bucket of water beside it. The counselors were waiting on the Meadow for Caleb, who stood watching them at the living room window. He was pleased that they’d dressed for the occasion—at least the girls had, wearing skirts or dresses, colorful earrings. He could nearly see the anticipation coming off them. He checked his watch again.

  At 4 p.m., he ran down the steps to join them. “Hello! Hello!” With one hand, he squeezed Saskia’s shoulder; with the other, Jeremy’s. “I’m so excited for this. We’ll start by taking a walk. After that, the news. Then, we’ll head over to the Gathering for fire and celebration.” He told them that they couldn’t talk, but they could sing, which they did, the entire camp repertoire as he led them south into the Dobies, along the remains of the trail the campers had made.

  This was the mitzvah of walking nowhere. Not to be confused with the mitzvah of walking somewhere.

  Now that he’d been reading David’s notebook, he thought of everything as a mitzvah: the mitzvah of looking at listings for tracts of land in the Re/Max office, the mitzvah of talking to the woman at the bank. He often found himself explaining these to David in his head, or asking David about his. The river gives us only what we don’t need, and that’s its mitzvah, David had written, like a koan. Caleb was still trying to figure that one out.

  After an hour, he circled around and brought the counselors back to the Overlook, because in 1985 a girl forgot her sleeping bag, and so he always told the 1982 Night story here. The late afternoon sun hovered over the far mesa, making everyone here more beautiful and, concurrently, connected by their beauty, unified, as if it meant something to be the recipients of this light.

  He stood on the bank of the ditch. The counselors formed a semicircle around him. He checked his watch. He looked toward the barn, the parking lot, the road, any direction from which Donnie might be coming, but Donnie wasn’t coming from any of them.

  Soon, the evening would lose its magic. The endorphin buzz from walking would wear off. The sun would set. The counselors would remember about dinner and last fucks and bus schedules. Tomorrow, they’d leave. He had no choice but to start without Donnie.

  He explained the mitzvah, what can be accomplished when a group does these mundane, repetitive actions together. He talked about the homesickness that comes from having a home and a nuclear family. He spoke on and on, words coming to him like white blossoms falling. He ran through a hurricane of them, until Donnie’s car finally pulled up beside the house. Donnie stepped out and made his slow way to them, wearing a cowboy hat, hands in his jeans pockets, his face glowing in the setting sun, just like theirs.

  “What’s this plateau called?” Caleb said theatrically as Donnie approached.

  The counselors looked around. Were they allowed to talk?

  “Shout it out. What’s this plateau called?”

  “Aemon’s Mesa,” Jeremy bellowed, one fist pumping into the air.

  “That’s right. And this here is Aemon’s great-grandson. Come here, Donnie.” Caleb gestured for Donnie to stand beside him. “This is my friend Donnie. You might remember him from the 1982 story.” He quoted himself telling the story: “And then Donnie said to me, ‘Caleb, all my dad and I want is for our land to be saved.’ ” He draped his arm around Donnie’s shoulder. “Remember how Donnie said, ‘I’d be thrilled if you could help us out. I’d be thrilled if you took care of this land next, but it’s a lot of work.’ Remember that?”

  They nodded.

>   He could feel Donnie’s shoulder muscles beneath his arm. He looked over and saw his eyes darting back and forth like trapped fish. “Well, something wonderful happened. Donnie recently let me know that he’s ready to protect this land himself. Did I get that right, Donnie? You’re ready?”

  Donnie nodded and said, “Ready,” just as Caleb had asked him to.

  Caleb raised his free hand. “I can see what you’re thinking. Why is this good news? Well, it means we’ve accomplished exactly what we set out to do. Look all the way to the mountain. Nobody built anything. Nobody paved it. Nobody dug up the earth for the minerals below, the oil shale below. We’ve kept it wild. And something happened to us in the meantime, something incredible. While we were guarding this land for Donnie, we changed. We became guardians, protectors. That’s what we are. That’s what we’ve become. All of us together.”

  He looked at their expectant faces, felt Donnie’s breathing beside him. All his nervousness, the adrenalized emergency of the past days, had dissipated, and he felt nearly calm as he slowly quoted Thoreau, drawing out the W’s and S’s in the sentence which had become like a nursery rhyme to him. “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

  He repeated the final phrase. “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Then he repeated it again, enunciating each noun with wonderment. “In wildness. Is the preservation! Of the world! Each of you should feel proud. Think of what we did, protecting Llamalo all these years! But now it’s time to ask ourselves, what is Llamalo? Is Llamalo this dirt beneath our feet? Is it the view of that mountain? No. It’s the way we live together, how we live without the distractions of modern life, the rituals we perform, the mitzvahs. Llamalo is a verb, not a place.”

  He looked at each person in turn. He loved them; he felt the love in his body. This was the invitation: his love. He said their names. Jamal. Saskia. Kai. Rebecca. Jeremy. Nat. Scott. Mikala.