“Well, of course it does. If I want to thank you properly for letting me in and showing me the way, I should know who you are.”
“I’ve reached the point beyond naming.”
“But you must have a name. Everyone has a name.”
“That person has been erased.” She gestures to the people watching silently all around them. “That’s why we come here.”
“Erasure?”
“The forge. We were ore. Now we are metal. Stronger, cleaner, better than before.”
“I see.” He remembers reading that the human body sheds nearly a million skin cells a day, that in a little over a year you have a completely new stratum, making you a different person. If cells can be lost, so can names, he supposes. Identities. He would ask more questions, but he’s not sure he’ll get an answer that isn’t a riddle.
They arrive at what must be the original home. A ranch with brown siding that would be completely unexceptional if not for the omnimetal that messily shells half the building. It looks like a snapshot of a sandcastle right as a wave strikes it, the silver tide curling around its base and foaming over the roof.
They climb the steps. The door gives a rusty shriek as his host opens it. “Wait here.”
She leaves him for a long minute and he neatens his bandages and readjusts the strap of his satchel to ease his back. Then the door opens again and his host waves him in and he enters the gloom of the interior. “Ah, thank you.”
The smell is potent. Both scorched and sweet, as if someone vomited onto a campfire. He sneezes and says, “Pardon me.” The floor is angled up slightly, the foundation unsettled by the meteor strike, and Yesno feels as though he is walking uphill when he enters the living room. The curtains are pulled shut and the room is dim, but he can see her eyes. The flashes of them as she blinks. She is otherwise a shadowed mound, a black shape stationed in the corner. He can make out the dead eye of a TV, the frame of a picture hanging crookedly on the wall, some books and porcelain figurines on a shelf.
“Hello?” He approaches her and puts out his hand to shake. “My name is Sam Yesno, and I’m —”
But a hand grabs his shoulder and stops his progress. The barrel of the Uzi digs into his ribs. “That is close enough.”
“Oh,” he says. “All right.”
His host steps off to the side but keeps the gun trained on him.
The eyes of Mother continue to watch. And then a lighter flares. The flame licks the bottom of the bowls they use. The bowls he’s seen downtown, displayed in the windows of head shops. Each one looks a little like a teapot made of metal. Into the hatched lid they feed the powder, the space dust. There is a handle to hold. And a spout to suck the smoke out of. He can hear the deep-lunged inhalation, and he can see more of her body, illuminated. She is hairless, like her brethren, and her skin is a blotchy pink. Her body is rippled and banded with fat, heavy enough that she would not be able to walk upright even if she weren’t paralyzed from the waist down.
Five years ago a shotgun blast nearly killed her and shredded the nerves in her lower spine. She lost her husband and her son. By all accounts she turned to oxy and then to heroin and then to space dust to ease the pain. And in the metal she found enlightenment. She has transformed from a retail clerk and Bible-study leader to a guru, a prophet of ninth metal. She is Mother. And Mother wears a night-black muumuu that covers everything but her head and arms. She sits on a couch, but given her size, it might as well be a chair. The lighter lasts only a few seconds and then she’s gone again to darkness.
“Thank you for taking the time,” he says.
Mother does not respond except to release the smoke of her held breath.
“Maybe you know why I’m here. I’m guessing you do. Frontier has been a fixture in this community for more than a century. We’ve had good times, like during the height of the steel boom. And we’ve had challenging times, like when environmental regulations and overseas competition nearly shut us down and killed Northfall. But we’ve endured. We stuck with the town and the town stuck with us. And now we’re doing better than ever. Because of omnimetal.”
He waits for her to respond, and when she doesn’t, he clears his throat. “Do you mind if I sit?” His eyes have adjusted to the gloom. There is a ratty recliner near him and he settles into it. “I’ll just have a seat, if you don’t mind.” He sets the valise on his lap and unbuckles it and pulls out a folder thick with papers. “I have some reading material you might be interested in.” He riffles through the documents, just to make some noise. “It covers our philanthropic efforts locally. For every dollar we make, we’re giving a good percentage back to Northfall. Scholarships, construction, medical care, nutritional programs, et cetera. You grew up here. I bet that matters to you.” Again he clears his throat. “I’m sure you’ve heard from many other companies. I know you have. And they’ve likely offered you a lot of money for different options. The land. The mineral rights. But they’re not from here. They’re selling snake oil. Black Dog, for instance. Frank Olmstead—maybe you know him—leased his land to the company about a year ago. They promised a clean extraction. After they finished, his land would be just as it was before, they said. And since those fifty acres have been in his family for as many years, that mattered to him. It sure did. But you know what? Black Dog lied.” He realizes he’s talking very, very quickly, the words starting to pile on top of each other, no breath between them. He can’t seem to stop himself. “They drained two lakes, razed his woods, left behind chemical runoff and even equipment. He’s living in a bomb crater. They don’t know what’s best for our community and our state. Do you know what I heard the other day? That Minnesota is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, and all the growth is concentrated here. We were losing people before. Now we’re gaining them. That sounds good, but it comes with complications. And —”
“This is a holy place,” she says.
“Yes?” He clears his throat and tries to remember what he was saying before. “Well, I don’t question that. I don’t doubt that. But here’s a thought. You have four hundred acres. What if—this is just me spitballing—but what if you kept two hundred of them? Or three hundred? Or one hundred? Or whatever. Whatever you felt was right. This could fund your . . . church? I’m sorry—I’m not sure if that’s the right word for what’s happening here. Your church . . . your following. You would be well provided for, and that’s an understatement.”
His heart is knocking his chest. He doesn’t understand why he’s so nervous. For a long painful minute, he listens to her fierce, singed breathing. Then the lighter snaps on again. This time she doesn’t bring it to the bowl. She holds it up so that he can see her fully. Her eyes, nose, and mouth are tucked into the middle of the rounded span of her face. Her chin is but a crease that’s lost to a pouch of fat when she says, “Look at me.”
A body is an instrument, and Sam often thinks of his as broken. Unable to move quickly or bear much weight or hurl or kick a ball with any accuracy or attract a woman—ever; he remains a virgin. You would think, looking at this woman—Mrs. Gunderson, Mother—with her swells and drools of flesh, he would feel something similar, that, like him, she was a physical failure. But in her solidity and mass there exists some significance he doesn’t understand. She barely speaks, but she dominates the conversation. She hardly moves, but he feels controlled by her. It is as though she is a vessel and inside she is as huge as the sky, as vast as space, with unguessable geographies. Whole galaxies might burn and wheel inside her.
She used to be a cashier at Farm and Fleet. She used to be married to an ex-con collecting unemployment. And now? Now she’s a drug lord or a pope or an amulet. Sitting on a billion dollars of metal. How can that be? How can the whole world suddenly feel like that? The before and the after irreconcilable. It’s as though all the memories have crumbled to ash and sifted away and now there is only metal, metal, metal.
“I don’t want your money,” she says. Her voice is high and musical and m
akes him think of singing. She used to belong to the church choir at Trinity Lutheran and he wonders what darker hymns she might sing now. “I don’t want anyone’s money. So I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him.”
“Him? Him who?”
“And do you know what I told him?”
“What?”
“The same thing I’m about to tell you.”
He swallows and almost loses the word. “What?”
“I want my son.”
“Your son.”
“I want him to be free.”
“I was under the impression that he —”
“You give me my son, and I’ll give you your metal.”
“I’m sorry, but I was told that your son is . . . dead. That he died along with your husband when —”
“He’s not dead.”
“Is this also some kind of metaphor? I don’t understand. I —”
“He is in the government facility outside of town. He is their prisoner and their experiment.”
“You mean the Department of Defense? That’s absurd. Why would they do that? How do you know that?”
“A mother knows.”
“But how —”
“A mother hears. A mother sees.” The couch springs creak as she shifts her body and sets the bowl down on the side table. “Take him to the Herm.”
“Yes, Mother.” The voice comes from behind him and he starts at the sound. He forgot she was there. He forgot when and where he was altogether, and the feeling is only more pronounced a few minutes later when he is led—blinking molishly in the sunlight—out of the house and down a slope.
The majority of the property, no matter how rich in omnimetal, has collected the dirt and leaves and pine needles that amass over time. Saplings rise. Grass and flowers grow. But the metal-eaters have kept this area clean. Swept and even polished it. The Herm. It is a collection of spurs. Monoliths. Each fifteen to twenty feet tall. Roughly shaped. Forming a circle fifty feet in diameter. Like the melted crown of some dead giant.
As Yesno is led into its center, the shadows seem to lean toward him with their cold reach. He must be imagining it, but he can hear something. Or almost feel it. An undersound. A hum. He has heard stories about how people with fillings in their teeth sometimes catch radio signals and he wonders if there’s any equivalency here. All of the nerves in his body feel shaky and electric, like iron filings in the presence of too many magnets.
“What is . . .” The question trails off as he turns in a circle, taking in the megaliths that surround him.
“Metal,” the woman says. “Metal is.”
* * *
When Yesno motors away from Gunderson Woods and down the county highway, he doesn’t notice the truck—a jacked-up club cab—that has pulled across the center line and blocked his way until he is almost upon it. His foot jams the brake and he skids a few inches before coming to a rocking halt.
“What on earth,” Yesno says and then he sees the decal running along its side. Black Dog Energy. “Son of a . . .” He steps out of his car and keeps on the other side of his door, as if to shield himself.
The driver’s-side window whirs down and Mickey Golden leans his head out. He wears aviator sunglasses that catch the sun. He wiggles his fingers as if imitating a child’s wave, and his many rings clink together.
“Get out of the way,” Sam says. “Please.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“Please move your truck.”
“You were in there a long time, bucko. And I want to know if you fucked her.”
“I’m not humoring you with an answer.”
“What’d she tell you? She tell you about her boy? She ask you to go fetch him? We’re dealing with a special sort of crazy in this one, I must say.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
Golden cranks up his accent, cowboying it up. “Y’all won’t have none. Long as you stay away. Gunderson Woods is ours.”
“Not unless you’ve got ink on paper, it isn’t.”
“What are you planning? Midnight raid? Take big mama out with a bullet to the belly and falsify her will?”
Yesno does not respond except to stiffen his posture.
“Don’t think we haven’t thought about the same. But there’s more ammo in that joint than a bullet factory. And those metal-eaters give me the creeping willies. You try to stage a raid, I can almost guarantee you you’re in for some David Koresh–style apocalyptic warfare, you know?”
“That feels like an accurate assessment, yes.”
“So? What’s your move?”
“To stay one step ahead of you, I suppose.”
“I guess it’s a bet, then. Who’s going to get there first? And you know how much is on the table?” He nudges down his sunglasses to show his eyes. “All the money in the world, baby.”
“Let me by.”
In response Mickey gives him a cruel smile. “What are you, anyway? Mexican? Injun? But you dress and act like somebody on one a them British baking shows.”
Sam slams shut his door and stands there defiantly. “Let me by!”
“You know what I could do?” The truck nudges forward, then stops, nudges forward, then stops, rocking closer and closer to Sam. “I could run you over right here and now and be done with you.”
The bumper batters his knee and Sam finally backs away.
“But that would be too easy,” Mickey says. “Got to give you a sporting chance!”
“Go to hell.”
“Oh, Yesno—you’re so much fun to mess with.” With that, Mickey cranks the wheel and stomps the accelerator hard enough to leave some rubber on the blacktop as he tears off down the road.
17
* * *
Stacie finds her father in his shop. The air smells like oil and cedar shavings. There are several benches, some topped by pegboards hung with saws and drills, others with felt boards pinned with dry flies and wet flies and tangled reels of monofilament. Here is an old framed advertisement for Hamm’s Beer, and another for the 1991 Minnesota Twins, World Series Champs. A twenty-drawer toolkit on rollers squats beside a minifridge full of cheese curds and summer sausage and Miller Lite.
In the center of the shop, laid out on four sawhorses, is the birch-bark canoe he’s been building the past few months. He’s finished the frame, cut and rolled and spliced the bark, constructed the inner gunwales. Right now he’s focusing on the outer gunwales, clamping them in place. “Just let me finish this one up,” he says.
She climbs onto a stool with a John Deere cushion. “No rush.”
She can see, even through his flannel shirt, her father’s shoulder blades, the sharpness of his elbows. He used to have a paunch. His cheeks used to jowl softly around his mouth. Her mother used to bully him to eat less, and now she gently tries to get him to eat more.
“Okay,” he says and steps away and cocks his head one way, then another, before giving the clamp a nudge, readjusting it. “That’ll do ’er.” He claps the grit off his hands and hugs her. “You going to help your old man? Working on the thwarts next, if you’re up for splitting some cedar.”
“Just wanted to be by you.”
“Be by me? Well, goodness.” He bends over the minifridge and pulls out two cans. “Five o’clock somewhere,” he says as he offers her one.
She takes the beer but doesn’t pop the top. “Been thinking about you, Daddy.”
“Don’t waste your time.” Some foam whitens his upper lip when he sips from the can. “More important things to devote that good brain of yours to.”
“You seem so sad all the time.”
“Sad?” The wrinkles on his face deepen. “Well . . . maybe I am a little sad. I guess I just miss how things used to be.”
“Yeah.”
He sets down the beer and picks up a broom and sweeps the bark dust dirtying the floor. “It’s like I don’t know where I stand anymore, you know?”
“Yeah.”
He leans on the broom
handle and studies her a moment. “Don’t you think something weird’s happened to this place?”
“I think something weird’s happened to the world.”
“But this place is what I’m talking about. This is the place I know.”
“Yeah. Something weird’s happened, all right.”
“Most people,” he says and starts sweeping again, working the bristles across the same stretch of floor and not making much of a difference. “Most people, they used to be content with their lot in life. Be a bank teller or a line cook or a teacher. Go to church on Sundays. Go out for a nice meal now and then. Marry somebody decent and pop out a few kids and try to keep everybody fed and clothed and happy enough. Dreams were for someplace else.” His sweeping slows until it stops. He stares off into the middle distance. “I remember one kid I went to school with—he wanted to be an actor. Wanted to move out to California. Make a go of it in the pictures. And, Lord, people gave him hell for it. It was just awful. Like, how dare he? We weren’t good enough for him? This place wasn’t good enough for him?”
“Lutherans,” she says.
He breathes a laugh through his nose. “Yeah, Lutherans. Don’t get too big for your britches must be written somewhere in the liturgy.”
“What happened to that boy?”
“He left. Last I heard he was working at a dinner theater in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I sure hope he’s happy.” He hunts around for the dustpan. “But anyway, what I’m saying is, everybody’s like that now. Big dreamers. Everybody wants to live here. Everybody wants to work here. Everybody wants to make a million dollars here. Everybody wants to drive a Lexus and drink champagne and wear alligator-skin boots that cost as much as a mortgage payment. Everybody wants to have it all. And there’s not enough room for all those big dreams.” He scoops up the dirt pile and knocks it into the trash. “There’s just not.”
He goes over to the window and she hops off the stool and follows him there. When she rubs his back, she can feel, through his shirt, the knobs of his vertebrae.
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