Authors: Claire Vaye Watkins
“We need to offer atonement. Deliver them unambiguous righteousness. We change the scenario, get them off the guilt circuit. We can’t drink their guilt. We can’t bathe in it. We say, ‘It’s okay that you fucked half the country, killed rivers, depleted millennia of aquifer,
fed arsenic to children and lied about it, forced citizens once again into internment camps, let people die in holding pens. It’s okay. It’s actually
good
—because look! You created this magical ecosystem. The way the Ukrainians call Chernobyl a national park. You meant to do that, right, America? Well done! Bravo!’”
“Yes,” she said. “How?”
He paused. “Baby Dunn’s
baby
. Imagine the attention when she surfaces, here in the wasteland, with you, happy—that’s the key—”
“What do you mean surfaces?”
“Nico has his devices. Thanks to
you
! You see how it all fits together?”
Luz, slow with root, did not.
“The Christmas Village you found. Your discovery. Some important equipment there, believe it or not. Nico’s been tinkering with his electronic stockpile ever since. The cloud and so on—not my area of expertise, but he’s confident he can get us access. Hack in at certain crucial junctions. He can get the word out.”
“What . . . word?”
“People remember Baby Dunn. They’ll see those old headlines—that photo of you playing soccer in the dirt. Do you have that? Never mind, it’ll turn up. We take them right back. And then: Ig. The fresh start.”
“I—”
“We need you both, and we need it to be big and wholesome and beautiful. Transcendent. Madonna and child.”
He saw her hesitancy, perhaps. “Think about it. You of all people were brought here. No one survives out there, but
you
did.
Ig
did. This is Zion, Deseret, the New World’s Holy Land. You see? Ig is our baby Moses.”
It was brilliant, it would work, and Luz could not agree to it. And
yet she already had, in a way, was already swept into the current of his plan. He was the Colorado, raging sculptor. She was not John Wesley Powell but one of his supply barrels, lashed alongside the boat, bobbing.
“Can you see it?” Levi wanted to know.
“Yes,” she said, her voice shadows and shapes.
“Yes?” he said.
“Yes, yes, you’re right, yes!” She flung the words and watched them burst on the wall.
Yes
went to pieces against the dome, wet and shattersome and dazzling.
Yes
came from her like a column, a beam of
yes
prismed in the room, each
yes
a starburst, a sunbeam fractal tessellation into eternity. Each
yes
a glowing thunderstorm, cool jewels in the deep pit of the earth radiating with positive energy, and though Luz knew each was empty she stuffed their hollow hulls with straw and positivity and stacked these, and with
yes
she kept the bombs at bay.
—
Beyond this mortar of impossible promises rose a massive, alien mountain range. Though it was the dune that approached the sheer sawtooth mountains, and though the colonists were accustomed to their nomads’ vertigo, all at the colony felt the sinister peaks bearing down on them. At first no one spoke this unease, doubt being an unconscionable transgression. Though they knew these mountains were destined ultimately to be dwarfed by the dune sea, they knew too that the craggy range was gargantuan compared to the other mountains the colony had rippled over and through. And those had been clay and soft ash, long-dead volcanoes, while these mountains were of a malevolent shining rock, unyielding razors thrust up from the earth recently, it seemed. Some said they were the Sierras, identified this peak or that as Mount Whitney. Others said no, these were a new, unknown range,
without names. Jimmer summarized their collective anxiety. “The dune will have no problem taking those,” he said. “But it may take us in the process.”
A symptom of some poison at the colony, was Dallas’s theory, some infiltrating toxin within. Jimmer conceded this could be the case. He wandered the colony with his smudge stick, deposited agates and crystals in strategic locales. Luz craved a whole cache of them beneath the Blue Bird, for she knew her lies had invited the range.
Luz was and was not Baby Dunn. She had been emancipated from that life, no longer used that name, though it was still hers—Levi had seen the state-issued proof of that, embossed with California’s great seal—extinct grizzly beside extinct river,
Eureka!
overhead. Even if Ig could play the role of Baby Dunn’s baby without exposing her foul providence, without drawing the Nut or the cops or her horrid people to them, Luz—urgently, desperately, painfully—did not want Ig to be Baby Dunn’s baby.
She did not allow herself to ask what Ray would think of her promise and instead her thoughts tramped unfamiliar paths. She found herself longing for Lonnie’s coins, his little pilfered notebook, his abstract and outdated prophesying, even sometimes for the man himself, who though repulsive and a poser would at least have a plan. How happy he would be here among the real holdouts, how giddy he’d go to find Luz in such trouble.
Levi refused even to acknowledge the nearing mountains, but that portentous range was always in the corner of Luz’s peeled eye nights she sat up nodding, nights Levi spent unfurling the fine points of his plan—the old contacts he would tap, the hordes of media that would descend. He lurched from catalyst to catalyst, groping obsessively in the firelight for the perfect way to set it all in motion. If started exactly right, the movement would create its own energy and feed itself
perpetually. Like the dune, Luz did not say. It couldn’t come from them, of that Levi was certain. The nation needed to think of the colony as their discovery, its rescue their collective simultaneous atonement and absolution. He kept coming back to a video of the two of them, one they would make. A real mother-daughter moment. Nico apparently had the means for both video and upload, thanks to the Christmas Village haul. A gardening scene, maybe. Or giving Ig a bath.
“You give her lots of baths? She’s used to them?”
“Yeah,” said Luz, though Dallas had been doing it these days.
“That’s perfect, just perfect—you have the water right there, but it’s human, domestic, maternal, intimate. There’s skin and sound. Heaven lighting. Squalor, but resolve. Some Dorothea Lange shit. And Ig likes the water.”
“She loves it.”
“Of course she does! Brilliant.”
Luz bit her thumbnail. “I don’t know, Levi.”
“What don’t you know? It’s perfect.”
“What if I can’t?”
Levi eyed her, suspicious. “You can—you have to. If you don’t, we have nothing,” he said. “No recourse. No strategy. All these people here, all the animals, the entire ecosystem. They will blast it all to glass!”
“What about the primer?” she offered. “What if we sent it out places? If people knew about all those creatures, they’d do something. Designate the dune a protected wilderness area.”
“‘A protected wilderness area’!” He laughed in her face. “Luz, I’ve recited the primer to every agency and advocacy group you can imagine. Every journalist and academic. They call it a fantasy, if they say anything at all. No one in the scientific community hears me anymore.”
Levi grasped her hands in his and squeezed. “You’re all we have. This is why you’re here. You must have realized that.”
Somehow, Luz did.
Levi became distant after she voiced her doubts, though he assured her he was only under tremendous pressure. The string of insurmountable peaks loomed, and scouts returned from fruitless efforts to find a kind pass-through. Worse, they reported its shape to be not a rigid spine but a bowl, so that on one side swooped the dune sea, their talisman and companion, and on the other loomed the crescent upthrust range, the livable scrub between them ever diminishing.
The colony buzzed with distress, yet Levi declined to soothe them. He was quiet at bonfire, except to invite them to look up at the stars, to remind themselves of their infinite insignificance and the undeniable omnipotence therein. He seemed not to notice the ripple bringing them nearer the stony grip of that impossible range. One night, instead of speaking, he pulled Luz aside and asked her to meet him later at the Holiday Rambler.
When Luz stepped into the Rambler, the girls offered their cordial, laconic greeting. Levi came in behind her, sending them abuzz. Luz had never seen Levi visit the Rambler, had never seen the girls in this sudden choreography. Someone brought out a platter of brute roots, the largest Luz had ever seen. Levi fed them all, saving Luz for last. He selected a pretty girl called Aza and another, Cass. When they escorted him back, Levi said, “You too, Luz.” And Luz went back with them.
She was nervous, a little afraid. She had never seen the back room of the Rambler. It was cleaner than any place she’d seen in a long time. Levi dropped his shroud to the floor and told Luz to do the same. They stood naked, facing each other, and the girls began.
They started at their heads, wiping the dune from Luz’s and Levi’s
brows with wet cloths. The girls circled their eyes, then ears, and scrubbed gently their limp mouths. Luz knew somehow that she was not to take her eyes from Levi and that she was not to speak. The girls went nymphs, quick and diaphanous in her periphery, wiping collarbones and shoulders, backs and chests. They held Luz’s breasts from behind and stroked them in circles. Luz reached for Levi then, but one of the girls pushed her hand away. Levi smirked.
Aza wiped Luz’s feet, lifting one gently and wiping it, rubbing roughly between her toes and buffing her calluses, then lifting the other. A moist rag went up her thigh, and a little warped cry escaped her. “Relax,” whispered Cass, wedging another skewer of root between Luz’s clenched teeth. “You’ll love it.”
When Luz was clean, they laid her on the bed. She looked to Levi but instead of joining her, he watched, amused, as the girls undressed. Aza was a languid creature, a gift. Cass had the hips and tits Luz had always wanted for herself.
Soon, wet clefts found Luz’s hands and worked against them. Then Levi took Cass by the hand. She smiled. They were sharing something, perhaps. Levi turned Cass, bent her at the waist, and Luz watched the twin hills of Cass’s haunches rise between them. Her chin was propped on Luz’s knee now and Luz might have liked to reach down and stroke her hair, but Aza had bent over and urged one soft breast into Luz’s mouth.
Levi took two handfuls of Cass. He whispered something and Cass heeded, kissing and licking Luz’s clit. It was something Levi never did, and Luz understood this as a gesture of reconciliation, perhaps forgiveness for her misgivings. Aza moved aside and combed her fingers through Luz’s knotty hair. Cass lapped at Luz as if she were a sweet. Luz lay her head back and closed her eyes.
“No,” Levi said. “Watch.”
Luz opened her eyes.
He spread Cass and pressed himself inside her. She moaned into Luz.
He seemed to be saying,
Watch her, Luz. See what loyalty is.
Levi rocked into Cass, pressing Cass’s face hard into Luz. Luz felt the sharp jam of Cass’s broad jaw against herself and winced.
“Shh,” Aza said. But Levi thrust Cass into Luz again and Luz cried out.
He shared a look with Aza and the girl climbed atop Luz’s chest. Aza’s black bush was rough against Luz’s stomach, then breasts, and though Aza was petite, Luz had to pull hard for air. She looked up at Aza overhead and wanted to be up there, with the air. The girl walked her knees up to Luz’s shoulders and pinned them to the bed. She lowered herself. A tangy scent, the taste milder. Luz kept her eyes open, saw only the slope of the girl’s belly above her. Luz attempted to lick upward—she was not sure what she was doing—but the girl ground down on her, pressing herself to Luz’s jaw and torquing there. Someone laughed. Luz felt Levi through the force of Cass pressed against her own pubis, and in the heaving of the bed. He was everywhere; it was becoming difficult to breathe. She tried to open her mouth for air but Aza ground down hard. Luz wanted to breathe; even more, she wanted to see Levi, to see him pleased with her yielding and acquiescence. But she saw herself as he saw her now—a torso squirming beneath Cass’s loyal industry, tiny breasts atop ribs asking for air, two bony legs thrashing now on either side of a better girl. She was embarrassed. She was embarrassed and she was suffocating. I can’t breathe, she called out, though no sound was made. She wondered how many such calls for help were up inside each of the girls.
Levi had each in different ways. He showed Luz what they did right, showed her how unguarded they were, showed her what it meant
to be truly selfless. This went on for a long time. The girls were very young, Luz thought, and very pretty.
After, the girls rose, wordless and synchronized. Professional. Luz hated them, but did not want them to go. Levi lay across the foot of the bed, glistening. He did not touch her—had not touched her once the entire time.
“I’m sorry—” she began, but he quieted her, gestured for her to lie at the other end of the bed. When he did reach for her, she flinched. He took her ankle and laid her leg across his wet chest. He rubbed his palm against the tender arch of her bare foot. “You’re a good girl, Luz,” he said finally. “But you’re not being honest with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re blocked. You don’t listen.”
“I do listen,” she said.
“You couldn’t hear anything we were saying today. Even the girls couldn’t open you up. You are completely closed off.”
She tried to laugh. “What are you talking about?”
“I used to be able to open you with my eyes. But you’re gone now. Something major is blocking you.”
She smiled and tried to pull her foot away, but he held it.
“I won’t be lied to,” he said.
She wished she weren’t naked. Wished for her shroud, her sling, her Ig, but each seemed equally and impossibly far. She wished for Ray, briefly, the easy lank of him sauntering into her mind, then she pushed him out.
Levi dug his palm into her arch. “Tell me about the baby,” he said.