Lava Falls Page 28

“I know.”

  “Will your people move on?”

  “Sasha wants to. She doesn’t like Jesus fornicating with Linda.” I think I’m clever steering the talk in that direction. I roll onto my hands and knees, and then straddle Jim, my pudendum pressed against his bellybutton. “Let’s take off our clothes.”

  I can tell he wants to, but his eyes are full of questions.

  “No one will know. Anyway, I love you.”

  I unbutton his suit jacket and roll him over to get his arms out of the sleeves. I unbutton the fly of his suit pants, too, and pull these off his skinny white legs. He’s not wearing underthings. Naked, Jim looks a bit like a larva, his pale whiteness glowing against the scratchy sand. I’ve never done this before but I’ve watched enough, so it’s no mystery. I’m guessing that Jim has never even watched.

  “Are you afraid?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer.

  I stand up so I can take off my clothes, looking down at Jim the whole time. The skin on his penis is soft and pink, like a baby mouse. I lie back down beside him and wait to see what he will do. I don’t want to frighten him, and yet, at the same time, if he doesn’t know how it’s done, how can he even know if he wants to do it?

  Jim knows how it’s done. In fact, suddenly I’m the one who is a bit afraid. Watching is one thing. Doing it is another. I concentrate on the laughing genes that I hope he is squirting into me. The chance, the odds.

  Jim laughs yet again, only softly now. I do hope with all my heart he doesn’t ever die laughing. I stroke his blond hair. I tell him what I know about sex and giving birth. I tell him he doesn’t have to be a stream run dry.

  “You’re only thirteen,” he says, and I know he’s asking, how would I know any of this, about sex, laughter, and streams?

  I shrug. He’s right. I’m only thirteen. I don’t know anything.

  Yet there’s a loose happiness between us as we walk the long way back to our respective camps. At the place where our paths split, I kiss him on his red mouth before going my way. I can tell he has liked our day.

  All my happiness discharges, though, as I draw near camp. Sasha is keening. Nicholas is drumming, fiercely, angrily. Some adults are arguing, and others are squatted near Sasha, murmuring. The children are huddled under a tarp, for the rain is beginning to fall in real drops, great splats.

  “What?” I shout. “What?”

  “They’ve killed Jesus,” Roxanne tells me.

  “No,” I say. “It’s only talk. They won’t really do it. God is against it.”

  “They brought us his body.” Roxanne gestures at a covered lump under a newly erected tarp.

  Sasha is inconsolable. She talks of killing Linda. She talks of killing Marvin. She talks of killing herself.

  “We’ll go to the continental divide,” Barley says, over and over again, trying to comfort her. “We’ll go now. We’ll make a permanent camp at a sparkling alpine lake with its own clear-running stream.”

  “I’ve heard the winters are actually mild in the mountains,” Roxanne lies. “We’ll have a grand new life there.”

  We bury Jesus out by the cliffs, right under his sculpture. We have to dismantle a side of it, and some think this is wrong, but I agree that he’d want to be in the heart of his work. Once he’s in the ground, I help put the stones back in the exact same configuration. The rain slashes down. Sasha rocks her body back and forth, convulsing with grief.

  We leave first thing in the morning, walking west with our full packs, the rain soaking our hair and clothes. I know we’ll walk for days, our feet squishing in the wet sand. I cup my tongue and hold it out for a drink.

  I am filled with sorrow. I love Jesus. I love Jim. I have lost them both. The we has fallen out of the me.

  I am also filled with curiosity. I do want to see the swell of land leading up to the continental divide, the craggy sculptures at the top, and also, maybe one day, what it’s like on the other side. I don’t care about snow and winter. I’m bursting with curiosity. We all are.

  Eventually we’ll stop for a campfire, and that’s when I’ll tell everyone. It’s possible that I’ll have a baby. It’s possible that she’ll be a laugher. I can’t wait to see what that’s like.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful first and foremost for readers, including all the ones I don’t know. Friends and colleagues who have read drafts of these stories, and/or participated in the instigating adventures, include Simmons B. Buntin, Suzanne Case, Anne Dal Vera, Paula Derrow, Glenn Fisher, Jane Fisher, Martha Garcia, Allen Gee, Dorothy Hearst, Barb Johnson, Nina Lawit, BK Loren, Raymond Luczak, Peggy Malloy, Cindy Medrano, Pat Mullan, Patrick Perry, Patrick Ryan, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Carol Seajay, and Elizabeth Stark. Thank you.

  My agent, Reiko Davis, is smart, hardworking, and kind. Having her in my corner makes all the difference. Thank you. The University of Wisconsin Press has been a perfect home for several of my books, including this one. Thank you Dennis Lloyd, Andrea Christofferson, Sheila Leary, Adam Mehring, Anne McKenna, and Amber Rose, as well as the anonymous outside reviewers. A special dose of gratitude for editor Raphael Kadushin, who shepherds fiction and nonfiction lists at UW Press with courage, heart, and vision.

  My parents, Helen and John Bledsoe, chose to raise me and my siblings in Oregon, and the beauty and wildness of that state has shaped me and my stories. When they first moved there at the beginning of their marriage, they started a club called Adventures Unlimited with a group of their friends. The adventures have been indeed unlimited.

  I’ve been fortunate enough to make three journeys to Antarctica, twice on National Science Foundation Artists and Writers fellowships and once with a private expedition led by an Australian group, Peregrine Adventures. So many people in the United States Antarctic Program supported me during these journeys, but a special thanks goes to Guy Guthridge.

  Thank you to Yaddo, Jentel, Djerassi, and Playa for the invaluable gifts of time, support, and creative community. Some of these stories were written at these residencies.

  Pat Mullan is my surprise companion through everything. One reason it works so well: Pat stays out late Saturday nights playing music at clubs called Piano Fight while I stay home and read; I leave before dawn on Sunday mornings to kayak in the bay while Pat stays home and reads. She also listens to all the minutia, and best of all, provides daily opportunities to laugh.

  The following stories have been published previously in slightly different forms: “Girl with Boat” and “My Beautiful Awakening” in Arts & Letters; “Life Drawing” in Roanoke Review; “Poker” (under the title “Enough”) in ZYZZYVA; “Wildcat” in Shenandoah; “Skylark” in Jonathan; “The Found Child” with Shebooks; “The Antarctic” in Terrain; “Wolf” in The Saturday Evening Post; and “The We of Me” in The Rumpus.

  While I thoroughly research the places and ideas in my stories, the people come from my imagination.

  Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of the novels The Evolution of Love, A Thin Bright Line, and The Big Bang Symphony as well as the adventure essay collection The Ice Cave. Her work has won many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, the American Library Association Stonewall Award, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. She has rafted and hiked the Grand Canyon, skied Yellowstone National Park, kayaked and hiked in Alaska, and made several journeys in Antarctica. She lives in Berkeley, California. Her website is www.lucyjanebledsoe.com.