A Light in the Merced River (Short Story)

A Light in the Merced River

  Libbie Hawker

  Copyright 2010 Libbie M. Grant

  https://libbiehawker.blogspot.com

  Contents

  A Light in the Merced River

  Other Works by This Author

  About the Author

  A Light in the Merced River

  On a bluff high above the Merced River, John stopped to admire a thatch of weeds. He set down his pack, folded himself cross-legged to the ground, and bent until he was eye level with the plants, with their many eyes, their yellows and scarlets all in bloom, the edges of their leaves just beginning to dry and curl in the oncoming heat of Indian summer. Some of the blossoms had already gone to seed. He plucked a stem, turned it in his fingers so the globe of feathered seeds twirled. He blew on it. A breeze from the river blew back, and the seeds lodged in his beard.

  Jeanne laughed. She’d come up behind him, walking quietly. She knew it pleased him when she was as quiet as she could be. He loved to hear her laugh, though, and she knew that, too. When she bent to pick the seeds from his long beard, he barely heard the whirr of her motion. All her intricate joints articulated with special care.

  “Come, John,” she said, and hefted his pack easily to her own back, along with the stuffed-full rucksack she already carried. “We have to keep going if we’re to reach camp before dark.”

  “Let me carry my own pack, Jeanne. It’s not right for a woman to carry a man’s burden.”

  Blue-purple shadows, slow like glaciers, were already carving the valley raw. Was it really so close to sunset? John stood, and reached out to her. She gave the pack meekly, but smiled when his hand brushed hers. They both knew it would be easier to allow her to carry it. But it wasn’t right, that a woman should carry a man’s burden. And Jeanne was a woman.

  They walked side by side to the cabin. John looked at her now and then, studied her contours and features in the same way he studied the valley, though her body was as familiar to him as his own. More familiar. Jeanne had a power in her profile: nose very long and very straight, lips young and blush-rose pink, cheekbones small and chin fine and pointed. He often wondered where her image had come from, for she looked like no other woman he could recall. She looked like no one so much as Jeanne. She was herself, his always-companion, the one who carried his burdens, the finest of his creations. His most intricate and warm-fleshed hymn to the Holy Ghost, Technology.

  The Spirit must have possessed him when he crafted her, when he laid the mobile face in place atop its neuromuscular network of tubes and wires, watched her open her eyes, watched the pupils adjust, whirr click, to take in the sight of her Creator. She was made by the hand of John, but was the stark essence of the spirit of Technology, cleanly cold, cleanly bright, cleanly undying. She was immaculate.

  In the small stone cabin, she stoked a fire for him. Back on the fruit ranch, his wife and daughters lived their lives. Here in the Merced valley, John watched Jeanne at her busy work. The deftness of her fingers striking the match. The precise, descriptive dance of wrist and forearm, touching the flame to the kindling, bringing to life the primitive bright heat, a soft and pretty Prometheus in her boyish trousers.

  John set about making his dinner, and wrote a while. Jeanne occupied herself with mending a rent in his pack – thicket, heavy bramble – and played, from inside her chest, a violin scherzo, quiet enough not to distract him.

  When they had both finished their work, the fire was still burning. John stood carefully. He looked at her, sitting cross-legged in the old wooden chair. The smoothness of her unbreakable skin was pleasing, contrasted against the splintering oak. Even this oak, one day, would erode, change, disintegrate, and be nothing. Jeanne would go on. The Ghost would go on. She understood the look in his eyes. Without being asked, she rose, and removed her clothing.

  The cot in the cabin was just wide enough. It was always wide enough. Violins rose and swelled and played inside John’s chest.

  The next day, John and his companion took to the trails again. He’d had maps, when he first came here to the open wildness of California on his mission. But he and Jeanne had long since moved beyond the scope of the maps, long since climbed past the paper borders, higher into the hills, deeper into the breathing valley. There was only so much information the Tech Cloisters in Boston could provide. Mapping was part of John’s duty. Mapping, and collecting the samples.

  Jeanne helped with both. She had weeks of work stored, and her memory banks were still not near full. She was filling up with maps, etching inside herself topographical lines, sinews and capillaries of the land. When the Cloisters sent their priests with the mining equipment, Jeanne’s data would lead them. The history books would remember John Muir, missionary, for generations.

  His father would at last be proud.

  The morning light was cold and pink. John held Jeanne’s cold pink hand. They left the foothills, descended to the valley floor, to the waist-high grasses and the head-high flights of insects. Jeanne bent over the earth to collect a sample.

  “John,” she said. “Chalcopyrite.”

  “What?”

  Jeanne stepped carefully along the ground, scanning. He could hear her ticking and spooling. “A very large vein.” She looked up. “This is wonderful, John. There may be enough here to last for decades!”

  “Wonderful,” John said, looking away from her, watching a toss of black birds scatter up into the sky. They hung over the scene he loved so well, the great sharp thrusts of granite, the bones of the planet exposed and defiant, unmovable.

  Chalcopyrite – copper ore. He should contact the Cloister immediately. He should uplink Jeanne, have her send her data to Boston as soon as possible – now. This was what they came for. This was John’s crusade.

  He imagined the valley floor stripped, pared of all its layers, the warm ochres of ore exposed to the sun. It wouldn’t be so different, really. The earth was bare now, standing above the valley in the mightiest peaks and ridges man could ever hope to see. But the stone was cool, blue-gray-green, and no steam-powered digging machines could ever carve such strength and beauty from the ground.

  “John?” Jeanne was waiting.

  “Record it,” he said, turning back to her. She smiled at him. She was happy to have found the ore, he could tell. All their hard work had paid off. “And then we’ll move on.”

  “You don’t want me to send the data now?”

  “No. Don’t send it until I tell you. Record it, and we’ll move on.”

  Jeanne shrugged, recorded the data, and followed him out of the meadow, still beaming.

  Ever since the start of his mission, since the Merced Valley had first gained this hold on his heart, John had been having dreams. Base, animalistic dreams, in which flesh ripped and blood spattered the grass. In the blood dreams, the grass went on bending, rippling across the belly of a hillside, while the animal twisted and screamed. El Capitan rose up above it, cold-blue-green, still and watching.

  At first, John had wakened screaming like the animal. Soon enough, though, he began to accept the dreams. And now, some nights he woke from them excited. Sometimes he woke Jeanne, and relieved his excitement on her body. She would move with him and moan until he spent himself. Afterward she would stroke his back and say sweet things to him, and John, knowing the source of his excitement, would feel disgust and loathing twist up inside. He could never tell her why he woke this way, what he dreamed. He could never tell her how nature thrilled him, how the sinister, bright-furred disorder of it made him throb with vulnerability and power. He was repulsed by his own instincts. He would, he knew, if not for the mission, take off all his clothes and drop his pack a
nd lope through the brush on hands and feet. He would catch a rabbit with his hands and kill it with his teeth. He would be caught in turn, stalked from behind by a mountain lion, or pulled up into the sky, twisting and screaming, by a great bird while his blood fell on the grass below.

  He could never tell anyone. Not his wife, not his colleagues. What would they think?

  Not even Jeanne. She was a being of Technology, as pure and straight as copper. She could never understand such a sickness. She could never understand what he was. By its very nature, what he was turned his back on Jeanne. Lovely, sweet, soft Jeanne, the hymn of his heart.

  He whispered the word as he walked through the forest, as he listened to the sound of Jeanne’s movements and processes tick staccato against the unmetered wail of the valley.

  Apostate.

  “John, I have a message for you.”

  They were down by the river again. John had set Jeanne to cataloguing all the species of plants by the riverside. She straightened now, clearly uncomfortable with the message in her banks, and looked to John for help.

  “From?”

  “Boston.”

  John sighed. “All right. Play it, then.”

  Jeanne settled herself on a boulder. Her eyes glazed, and the irises flipped back.

  The image projected out in front of her, hanging up above the wildflowers: a clean-shaven man, neat hair, receding above the temples, black garb of the Holy Order. Father Wilkeson. The one who’d sent John to California to search for the ore. The sight of him made John cold with guilt. The image wavered as Jeanne collated the data. A pair of cabbage moths flew, tumbling, through Father Wilkeson’s face.

  “John,” Wilkeson said. “We haven’t heard from you in nearly two weeks. We are still able to link to your companion, but she hasn’t responded to any of our queries. You are overdue with your report.” The Father’s voice moved faster than his lips. John nodded, as if the Father could see him. He was a chastised altar boy. “We need to know your status, John. The miners are ready to move in any time, if we can only get confirmation of ore. Contact the Cloisters immediately upon receipt of this message.”

  Father Wilkeson folded his hands in benediction. Then he blinked out.

  Jeanne’s eyes resumed their bright, soft smile. John bent to take her hand. He helped her rise from the boulder, though she needed nothing of his help, weak, disgusting creature that he was, armature of breakable bone, torn skin, mirror-purple shining viscera under an unseeing sky. Grass rippling in the wind. What was he, compared to her purity of purpose, her piety? He was an evolved beast, still stinking of the slime from which he rose, still red inside with the wildness and desire. And she – she was Created.

  “I’m not worthy even to touch you, Jeanne.”

  She held onto his hand. “Don’t be silly. You created me. I’m your Creation. I would not be, but for you.”

  “The Cloister has been trying to reach you all this time, and you’ve ignored their queries.”

  “You told me to hold all data until you are ready to send it. It’s important to you.”

  “How do they get data out of companions? Is it painful?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve always given it to them freely. It’s not difficult that way. But….”

  John waited, holding his breath.

  “But they tried…coaxing me…a few times.” The smile slipped from her face. She turned away from him, watching the river, the little black birds bobbing on the rocks mid-stream.

  By righteousness. John closed his eyes, wondering what she might feel with this coaxing, and afraid to wonder. He squeezed her hand. The metal inside her pulsed faintly. “I’m sorry, Jeanne. I’m sorry to have put you through it. You don’t deserve this.”

  She turned back to him. Her face was all peace and gentleness again. “I do it for you, John. I will do anything for you.”

  He left Jeanne beside the river. There was still plenty of light left in the day, and John wanted to begin enumerating the animal life of this part of the valley. It was easier to do alone. Something about Jeanne repulsed animal life, sent it scattering to a safe distance, set it spying with hidden yellow eyes. Beasts, of course, couldn’t be expected to understand Technology. Theirs was the base drama of nature: kill, be killed, birth young, and rot in the ground. They could not Create. They could not understand.

  John climbed into the foothills, fantastically angry with himself for allowing Jeanne to suffer, and wholly unable to make himself give the order that would relieve her of her burden. When he’d ascended halfway up the hill’s face, he turned in a clearing to look back at the river. Jeanne was there, bobbing among the rocks, a small golden blur in the mess of green. From this distance she looked more human than John had ever imagined her to be.

  He pushed back into the dim umber forest, let the branches of cedar and aspen close around his face, cut off the sight of his companion. When he was concealed, he sat still in the undergrowth for a long time, breathing the smell of crackling sap and loam and fur. Then, when he could stay still no more, he ran uphill, crashing through thickets, slipping on rocks, skinning his hands, and up again, up again, running.

  Squirrels scolded his passing. Ravens took offended flight, dark shapes winging past dark trees. A deer burst out of the brush and ran with him, three, four bounding paces (Could I reach out, he thought, and tear its flesh with my claws?) then veered away again and disappeared into the sinister shadow of the wood. He ran until his lungs burned with cold fire.

  At hill’s crest, the path of some secretive creature wended around fallen logs and between aspens. John doubled over on the path, hands braced against knees, heaving for breath. His mind still felt the forward motion of his flight, and everywhere he looked his vision raced away from him, stretching the landscape out and out, though he was standing still – he was sure of it.

  He turned his face up in a shaft of light that pierced the canopy. Treetops like black lace bent over him. At the crown of a maple, sparrows danced among the branches, busying themselves with their inconsequential, brittle, short little lives. John watched them, and they watched him, the tiny obsidian beads of their eyes.

  A golden blur in a mess of green. More human than ever.

  The birds, like the trees, like the ground, like the sky, stretched away from him, receded, traveling away through narrowing space and time, faster than he could ever run.

  That night, when John had the animal dream, he burrowed deeper into it. He brought the dream to his mouth and bit and tasted copper and salt.

  Jeanne lay in the rippling grass, naked, exposed to the elements. He had the momentary urge to cover her with his body – not to love her, but to protect her from the corrosive, corrupting power of the valley.

  He moved toward her, arms and legs weighted, underwater, but when he stood over her he bent instead and lifted off the gentle curved plate of her face. A swarm of cabbage moths smoked up from where her eyes had been, battering his cheeks and eyelids, obscuring his vision, powder white.

  When they passed, Jeanne was gone. The earth held a damp-smelling impression of her body. Just the memory of a shape, and nothing more. John’s hands were empty.

  He opened his eyes deliberately. The lids were heavy. The fire had long since burned to nothing. The cinders in the fireplace rustled in a wind that crept down the chimney. Jeanne, lying on her back, was barely visible beside him in the dimness of the cabin. She was in sleep mode, her systems cool and retreated.

  John sat up to look at her – what little of her he could see. His animal eyes dilated in the dark. The shapes of her body flowed together, forehead into cheek into valley dip of collarbone (steel reinforced), chest plateauing to high breast receding to flood plane of the abdomen, to dark river delta, to two long strong legs, a stretch of hills on the eastern and western horizons. Here the sun rose and set. My Jeanne. My Creation. My valley. My wilderness. He would run in her forests forever, if he could. But some day, soon, he would age and slow, while Jeanne went
on as unchanging as religion.

  Would he turn her over, he wondered, stroking her golden hair, to a younger man, to carry on his work? A Bostonian, fresh and holy from his time in the Cloisters spent building and programming? A young man unruined by nature? John’s hand moved from plateau to plane. His palm cupped the world, and the world throbbed faintly with sleeping energy. What would his own work be, as an old man? Overseeing missions like this one? Sending other young men and their companions into the wilderness to face the temptations of the world?

  He stretched his aging, hot body beside the comforting coolness of his Jeanne. He pressed his face into her firm skin, smelling her, the clean, bright, metallic incense. She had kept all the data back for him. She had denied the Cloisters, resisted their coaxing. For him.

  And in a mad, black rush, John knew he didn’t want to go back. Couldn’t go back. Though he lay still, he was dizzy. His head buzzed with the sudden, forceful rush of his realization. Damn the Cloisters, and damn the machines. He would stay here in the Merced valley, with the birds and the deer, with the foxes and the hundreds of unseen yellow eyes. With the weeds on the ridge. With the rocks in the river. He’d keep Jeanne here with him. They’d be stewards of the valley together.

  Boston would send more missionaries eventually, and perhaps John and Jeanne could get rid of them. But no – soon enough they’d overwhelm this place. Soon enough others would find the copper ore. Soon enough the machines would come. The river would be diverted. The hillside would be cleft by an ochre wound. And all the wild things – deer, bear, John, fox – would be displaced, or killed.

  It was hopeless. Entirely hopeless. Boston was too powerful for one man and his companion. But John wouldn’t be a part of it. By righteousness, he would not. This one thing was in his control: to resist them, as Jeanne had resisted. To deny them what they sought. They would have it eventually. But they would never have it from him.

  And Jeanne. She couldn’t stay here, in the wilderness. Eventually she would need the maintenance of the Cloisters, an updating of her programming, a replenishing of her blue heart. She was a being of Technology, and without some link to it she would die.