Authors: Claire Vaye Watkins
THE GIRLS
Nico was Tesla in another life. He was Tesla and he was Vlad the Impaler. You’ve got one of those déjà vu faces.
DALLAS
Nico is a savage. That’s his Chieftain there. Leave him be.
JIMMER
If you open your eyes to the sun at dawn and dusk, when its energy is purest, you will absorb all the day’s nutrients via the ocular ducts. It’s a mainline to the brain, nutrients converted directly to brainpower. Einstein did this. Bach, too. Picasso’s Paris studio faced east and he would stare out the window for an hour each morning to invigorate himself. He painted
Guernica
in three weeks.
So Luz began her sungazing, began pacing up and down the Blue Bird with Ig and letting the child pull a dusty blanket aside and ask, “What is?”
“Sunrise,” Luz said, staring. She wanted a better brain, wanted to make beguiling, impressive things, or at least to need less. She drank up the morning rays until her eyes stung, keeping Ig in shadow. So far she had not felt much resembling rejuvenation or genius. The only tangible effects of her sungazing shone when she closed her eyes and the sun remained there, both darkness and light. Then one day, pointed somethings beneath it too.
She opened her eyes and looked not at the sun, rising, but at the structures on the horizon below. A mirage, surely, but a queer one: dollhouse silhouettes, gingerbread houses all in a tidy row. She squinted harder against the sun, thinking she was maybe cracked up after all.
NORTH POLE OUTLETS
, a sign reassured her.
“Dal,” she said. “I think I found something.”
—
The colony swarmed, darted across the asphalt lanes, between the planters and decorative lampposts, beneath eaves dolloped with plaster snow, to shops with brown paper taped over their windows, chains across their glass doors. Luz went too, with a wet shroud over Ig to keep the heat away. Luz had spent a lot of time in malls, as a preteen and after. It was where the suave young handlers from the agency always took them when they traveled, if they had any downtime. She strolled the outlets as she might have were it not abandoned, Ig swaying in her sling.
Meanwhile, the others lifted forest-green trash cans and chucked them through the store windows, sending glass down like rain, making Ig clap. Through one such waterfall came Nico with left-behind batteries, phones, cameras, laptops, wires and plugs—contraptions Luz had not seen for a long time and had not missed. In another shop Dallas filled a duffel with puffy plastic packages of linens. From another shattered window Cody emerged cackling, with shoes on his hands.
“What size are you?” he called to Luz.
She could not remember, had to check the bottom of the starlet’s sandals.
Cody came back with boxes stacked big to little, a cardboard wedding cake. He gave Luz a pair of sensible mom tennies with yellowed gum soles, pink Velcro light-ups in every baby size for Ig. Though it was too bright out to see whether the light-up cells were dead, Ig liked Cody, perhaps saw that he needed her enthusiasm, and faked some.
Newly shod, Luz and Ig went exploring. The baby walked and walked. In one courtyard cul-de-sac they found Santa’s Village, maze of plastic presents, one nutcracker sentinel toppled. Ig was uninterested. They went on.
“What is?”
Luz followed Ig’s gaze to a carousel, its bulbs surely dead but its mirrors and gold trimmings gleaming. Luz lifted Ig over the wrought-iron fence and climbed after. They walked among a pearly menagerie: no horses but pairs of unicorns and zebras, two-humped camels, dignified giraffes. Luz said all their names, though Ig could not or would not repeat any:
“White tigers, Ig!”
“Look, jackrabbits!”
“Cheetahs!”
“Ostriches!” long-legged and confident.
“Eagles!” with wings splayed.
“Dragons!” tongues and tails forked.
“Dolphins!” sleek, lunging muscular through the air.
“Mermaids!” with iridescent tails.
All ahover on candy cane poles, waiting. A wide swan bench for lovers.
Ig stroked and inspected, and gradually the others joined them to marvel at the carousel. When Levi came he told everyone to hop on. Luz perched Ig in the saddle of a fat panda, cinched the dirt-crusted straps around the child’s tiny torso, and climbed on behind her. When everyone was on, Levi, Nico and a boy named Lyle from Cody’s school pushed. Jimmer helped with his good hand. It seemed impossible the wheel would ever turn, but it soon yielded, its insides groaning, the opalescent animals lurching up on their poles then gliding down, coaxing synchronized squeals from their passengers. Above those squeals came music, a warbled underwater tune from somewhere deep within the contraption. As they whirled, a breeze came to the riders, cool and awakening, bringing them lost sensations and forgotten memories.
A girl named Fern remembered her brothers’ launching her from a trampoline.
A girl named Cass remembered clinging to an indifferent beau on the back of his dirt bike.
Luz remembered luging down Canyon Drive on Ray’s longboard, his impossible laugh in her ear.
Cody remembered flinging himself down a ridge beyond Wide Rock, the once he tried to escape.
Dallas remembered floating on her back in the last warm dregs of the Yuba River.
Jimmer remembered his boy.
They laughed anyway.
In the gilt-framed mirror overhead, Luz watched Ig: startled but brave, then cautiously merry, clenching her mama and Mama clenching back. Luz wanted to feel this way forever.
Up ahead, Jimmer swung himself around the pole he’d been pushing and hopped on. Cody and Lyle soon did the same. Levi pushed and pushed, sweating, laughing, hollering for everyone to hold on. He finally jumped on too, shouting
whee
, and Ig said
whee
too. Luz wondered if he’d heard her, wanted to catch his eye and mouth
thank you
, but soon the carousel was succumbing to its old inertia, the tune above stretched slow and sorrowful.
After, Cody kept congratulating Luz.
“For what?” she said finally.
“You found this,” he said.
“The carousel?”
“The whole damn place!” said Cody, admiring his new loafers.
“Amazing eyes,” said Dallas, still aglow from the ride.
“Beautiful work, Luz,” confirmed Levi, watching Nico inventory his devices.
“You would have found it without me,” she said. “Anyone would have.”
“Not true,” said Dallas. “Things aren’t so reliable out here. The dune could take this place by sundown.”
“And we were out scouting last night,” said Levi. “Didn’t see it, didn’t hear it. This is a gift for the very attuned. Unequivocally so.”
In this way word of Luz’s offering spread through the giddy colony assembled in the shade of the carousel, assessing their haul. Many posited that Luz possessed such qualities as knack and grit and presence of mind. Luz watched Ig do bobbleheaded, bow-legged laps around the carousel in her light-ups and considered the possibility that she did. It was the first time she had ever been a good omen.
The colony reconvened that evening, when someone swung a girthy branch of mesquite into a bomb casing pilfered from Travis Air Force Base, sending a gong throughout the settlement, a solemn series of
om
s that summoned all to bonfire.
Cody was scurrying about, feeding mall debris into the fire. He passed near them and squeezed Ig’s knee.
“Watch,” said Luz, and set Ig on the ground. Free, Ig tottered, her light-ups’ pink carnival beacons flashing underfoot.
“Wild!” said Cody. “You’re tricked out, Ig.”
Ig seemed not to notice, concentrated instead on running.
Luz spent some time hunched, chasing after Ig and redirecting her away from the fire. Ig had by now become a kind of mascot at the colony, and people Luz had never spoken to tutted
Ig, Ig, Ig
as the baby chugged by, lighting their faces with red siren lights. Jimmer smiled at the child from where he sat on a bench seat from a gutted van, whittling a stick. “Psychedelic,” was his assessment.
Ig wanted up, so Luz lifted her. Ig wanted down, so Luz put her down. Ig pulsed her two curled fists skyward, asking for milk, so Luz found Dallas.
“Relax,” said Dallas, encouraging Ig to latch. “We’re not going anywhere.”
A pretty girl made room for Luz on a log near the fire, where smoke whipped into her face. Smoke follows beauty, said Billy Dunn, wherever he was. She blinked the ash from her eyes and saw Levi, or a mirage of him, watching her. Thick arms, sturdy trunk, still. Planted, or rooted. But those metaphors were expired here and the word that came instead was
embedded
. Suddenly, Luz arrived at a simple and perplexing fact: in the few siesta hours since the carousel, she had missed him.
A gust swelled the fire and brought Luz Mojav stories. They seemed ridiculous to her now. That the well-shaped girl beside her was a park ranger’s bride-in-Christ. That Nico, sitting cross-legged on a papasan in the bed of a truck, fiddling with some electronic he’d rigged to life, had a desk at an institute somewhere, unreturned term papers in a drawer, two yellowed strips of glue on the wall where someone had pried his nameplate free. That Jimmer was one of the Needles Twelve, his lost boy the forgotten child of the Mojave. That she might smell the oil on him still. That she might find black smirks still under his fingernails. That Levi had refused to board the National Guard lorry with his wife and twin daughters.
Beside Luz, the pretty girl spoke. “I want to admit that I’ve been doubting,” she said, and the others went quiet. “In the past. And recently, even. I’ve been unsure of why we’re here.” Her voice wobbled. “I’m ashamed to say it but it’s true.”
Someone said, “It’s okay, Cass.”
Cass said, “In a way it was easier when I first felt pulled. There was clarity there. It was stark, undeniable. Plus I had nowhere else to go.”
Many laughed.
“But being here is different, not so clear. I get a now-what feeling sometimes. I don’t know, maybe it’s easier to be lost than found. At least there’s energy in lostness. Something to be done. I know we’re supposed to trust the place, to embrace its mystery, to keep our eyes open, and I try to do that. I do. I try to be a vessel. It’s hard though, hard not to wonder what we’re supposed to be looking
for
. But today I knew. Today I was a vessel filled. It’s true—if we’re open and honest we will be consoled. I was.”
Nods all around.
“I want to offer my gratitude for that, and to tell anyone who’s feeling that now-what feeling to hang in there. To stay open, honest, willing. Like Levi says, we can’t force wonders. Can’t insist on signs. But they do come.” Here, she looked at Luz. “And when they do you can’t miss it.”
How lovely Cass looked, pliant and bare. Luz envied her. The Amargosa curates, Dallas had said.
Spiritual
was Lonnie’s word—the memory brought Luz old shame from new sources: how she’d scoffed at the very idea, the well-trod path her mind inevitably strolled, a straight line downhill to cynicism and disdain. She wished Ray were here, to buoy her with his capacity for belief. The world had been wider with him in it. She looked again to Levi, who could hear the earth. He seemed to want something from her.
“I’ve never really been a part of anything,” Luz said, without knowing why except it felt right. “Or, anything I could believe in. I guess what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that idea, belief.” Some nodded. “I haven’t ever had a believer’s disposition. But lately I’ve been getting comfortable with the idea of something bigger than myself—I don’t want to say ‘God.’ When I was growing up people around me used that word in all the wrong ways. It was a weapon, that word.
‘God’s love’ was this scrap everyone was fighting for, something you could win by dressing with modesty and having a clean face, by sitting quietly. But why should those people and their fucked-up nonsense have anything to do with my experience, is what I’ve been thinking lately. Can’t I decide who I am? I’ve never been a very good listener, but today I felt I could be.”
Many nods.
“I know what you mean,” Luz said to Cass. “About it being harder to be found. It’s like there’s been this momentum carrying me forward, this energy, and I wasn’t sure where it was taking me. Scary, that feeling.” Several moaned their assent, urging Luz on. “But freeing, too. In a way. And now . . . I don’t know. A lot of it hasn’t made any sense. Or maybe it makes too much sense? I don’t have a lot of experience with clarity or . . . significance, I guess you’d say. I’ve never been good at it . . .” Her voice went wet with emotion and Cass patted her shoulder.
She went on. “You can’t see that from the outside, how frightening it can be to believe. Believers always seem so serene. I’ve never felt serene a day in my life.” Some laughs. “But I think maybe it’s been taking me here, that energy. I don’t know if that makes sense. Does anyone else feel this way? Maybe it’s just me . . .”
“No,” said Levi. “We all feel all of that every day. You are supposed to be here, Luz.” He went on. His words had a way of making the complicated comforting, making the listeners’ abundant fears instead evidence of sensitivity and keenness. He somehow unearthed confidence and serenity from deep wells of fatigue, revealed the sublime subtext in the long list of civilization’s failures. He brought, as he spoke, a verdant world to them—transformed the colony from a place of isolation and hardship to a place of beauty and abundant blessings. He invited the yuccas to lift their tired heads, regrew the wild grasses, reran the rivers,
cleansed them of their saline and fertilizer and choking algae, replenished aquifers and refilled swimming pools, plucked the woodworms and emerald ash borers from the trees, rid the forests of their malignant fungi, swelled the snowpack, resurrected the glaciers, refroze the tundra, returned the seas to their perfect levels. It seemed possible, as he spoke, that his words might summon thunderheads, that his voice might bring rain.
—
Levi was human again beneath the sun of suns, his head draped in cloth, though Luz saw that his eyes had the same electricity as she offered her hand to help him up through the open back door of the Blue Bird.