The Archive
Body as Rebellion
I. Every session begins with lighting tests. Tentative shutter clicks as you shift how shadow drapes the nose, the right ear, a corner. More shutter clicks. (Is the battery charged?) Absent-minded compositions guiding where light, honeyed and gleaming, sits. To soften a clavicle, the wrinkle of a smile. To color silence in measured breaths. I exhale for the photographic encounter: In a sixtieth of a second, my finger finds a button — click — the lights flood Shoot! The maker of a photograph is a trigger Shoot! This = black-bodied figure with beauty at the end of its ready-aim- Shoot! In fractions of a second, beauty is made as it is taken — in sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths — in spaces only breaths pass, in and out, a nostril, in and out, a lens, a barrel, a photo Shoot! II. We were in and out of Epicraft Studios at two p.m.; the previous session was running late, eating into my scheduled time. They were double-booked; I was deprioritized. Big Boss Lady Ann told us to come back at four p.m. This city: always running on its own time, pushing you to wait, weave, and hustle for it. Luckily, Kevin — the subject — and I — the maker — had time to spare. Achar — the stylist — was late anyway. We sat at the Java House on Koinange Street, after weaving through Nairobi’s heart, hunting for coffee: two hours to kill like two weeks before, when eight a.m. had found us frail, during the Rika Residency at the Goethe-Institut. It’s where we met. We were setting a queer scene in the heart of Nairobi. The residency was a week to think, to engage in the alchemy of conversation, to wonder about feeling good. Our silos breached for communion as gaggles of gays, theys, expressions, sisters and cis-ters. Some familiar, some soon to be. We could be honest, for once, about being queer/people/here in this city. I: the immigrant — hyphenating Kenya into a distance we shared — artist, among four decades of generations and memories. We: makers, movers, shapers, community builders. We could be honest about this city. The friction of the air and the fact of our bodies. For despite the borders that parted us, that week we built a bridge. We were two-or-more in a gaggle of gays eyeing Kevin Mwachiro on the first day, for he was a hot pair of legs wearing them short-shorts; they might’ve been yellow, but I recall only the long sentence of brown from heel to knee to thigh — who was this guy? Unbothered by our eyes on him. My gaze quickly turned into admiration. I had known of his podcast, Nipe Story, short stories given a voice. But on the face-to-face, I learned more about his documenting of queer Kenya. It was something we shared. We were two-or-more lips gathered in story, asking who betrayed Noni, whose ear Chastity chewed out to tears for tardiness, but at Rika, the room was bound to ask, Who invented time anyway? What does it take to be in the Haus of Andeti, to whip my hair and whack my hands to an eight-count, collecting my tens at a ball; who found an old flame on a matatu, lost love found commuting; Njoroge and Obel rode the same mat till the last stop before they realized they’d traveled so far together, alone; all of us traveling far, realizing too late that we can share more than silence on this commute. We were two-or-more dressed in black, in yellow, some in blue, the hues continued as a radical gratitude spell — You are needed — tea in our hands, a third helping of an embrace — You are a miracle walking — wisdom is a spoonful of beans, and Ras says — I use my craft to say thank you . . . A better word met my lips in the middle of a shutter — click — For you I am grateful. It was all a rehearsal. We acted it out, again and again, that which brought us together: the need to feel good. We were two minds, Kevin and I, building rafts out of questions, So what do you do? in a corner of the hall, rowing through currents of curiosity, I’m a photographer, amongst other things, following the swirl of a question mark, I wanna do a birthday shoot for my fifty-first, the field of could be and what if form a horizon, What do you have in mind? the sky bleeding into the sea bleeding into the raft, I don’t know. I leave that up to you. I trust you, a rowboat built of asking, trust, swallowed by the sea. Now, I watch him from behind. Clearing a path to a booth all the way at the back of the coffee shop. We had been texting after the residency, sharing screenshots and mood boards, putting this day together. When I took three days to answer his texts (as I’m known to do), he wrote back, I don’t do well with silences. The fact of his person was an enduring patience, a spirited slowness, capacious even, like a shore I could lie on. I followed the man, feeling at ease in the wake of his step: Every table, the windows, the door, all were in view from where we sat, watching people go in and out of the city’s core and center — breathing. Achar was late anyway. III. Kevin — sweet, polite, kindness in his regard — greeted every server, speaking with a coastal chill that I’ve left behind, living in city after city after city. If a lens could arrest cadence in color, turn a voice into a surface for light, a body. He was easy to break into a smile that crept to his eyes and rested there. We shared fries, stories, and a black pen, inking each other in words for later. Two writers painting the air of a little red booth with future past and perfect tenses, talkin’ ’bout talkin’ ’bout: an essay in the oven, a blog post, the last read book and its Post-it notes, an idea, a flame in need of a wick, a word for a body, and residence/resilience/rebellion. We waited the hours, pouring salt on spiced fries. I would’ve been like you, Kevin says. Had I been out when I was younger, I would’ve been like you. We were two-or-more lips calling out a thief for all the things we’d been robbed of — the ease of boarding a matatu, of talking, of walking, without an unsavory mouth gathering into a dark cloud following us home — Ei msupa, shoga — the lost time waiting, living in secret — if a closet wasn’t a thief, if queerphobia wasn’t a thief, if fear wasn’t a thief, if the past could be corrected — no! — if time could be entangled to propel us past what was stolen. To live, urgently, to live urgently, to live. I saw him: a storyteller, the curve of a current, freshly in his fifties, happy, alive, gay. I lived for it. We were two-or-more lips sharing the most beautiful gift: a vision, a wink of possibility, potential in these queer lives we hold. Singing a true song, saying thank you. Living for it despite despite despite IV. At the end of the fries, strutting a Sunday best on a Tuesday, shades over a wide smile, a black-and-white knitted vest — the world their runway — Achar arrives. Drama is what you want from a stylist. We hug, we kiss, like a family reunited. We walk on back, ready for the studio, ready for the Oh Shoot! The studio manager notices our punctual return; the big boss lady wears a nervous smile. No wahala, let them finish, I’ll give you an extra hour. A woman rehearses her lines: a promo for a voice acting gig. Silence on set! . . . Can you speak in a low voice? Or in a high voice? This is an opportunity for — She stammers her line. Achar lays out fabrics, pants, sheer scarves. The woman begins again. Kevin unzips a duffel, handling kitenge and kangas, adding to the pile of glimmering, colorful garments spilling to the floor, pattern and line clashing, like the trick to a lyric (a rhyme), we pick something blue to start Shoot! We begin again, with a parabolic softbox showering light onto him: donning a kanzu and a beaded bracelet. In that moment, conversation was in the regard, the look. The first shutter clicks, followed by recalibrations: How many fractions to every second? The first shutter clicks train the ear to the beeping, the eye to the flood of lights — to give it all to music — and Raise your chin just a little bit Shoot! The first shutter clicks remind that seeing is being seen, to author is to be witness then witnessed. In the sparse light, Kevin lifted his arms toward the brilliance like a dancer in flight; the shadows found his body, and the light his open palm the greatest gift cupped — streaking down the arms — he carried it to his chest, and the light spoke from the lift of his lip. Here is a home flickering behind his lids; I measured my eyes in millimeters, my mouth coaxing, Yes, yes, that’s right, yes, yes, my finger on a trigger; could we ask of a studio to be a brave space: for the body’s fragilities to curve into a lyric Shoot! he looked like a breath; namely, the force lifting a body; namely, evidence of its immensity; namely, his joy; namely, the manner in which a life is lived, breathing we lost the hours to jazz while Kevin moved like a garment, in the tiny fractures of shutter clicks, draped in kitenge and linen and the craft of Achar’s hands; we made a monarch out of him Nom nom, Achar said. You are eating! Shoot! then he was sitting, regal, a hand poised on each knee, a halo round his head, a white chiffon scarf, and the whole of him presiding over this stage, a light blue backdrop, with Thandi Ntuli voicing color in the air, we heard joy in the air and said, Ubarikiwe, a shutter click, you are invited, like a body is a sanctuary
Read MoreThe Enemy
Near the end of the war, my father had a week’s vacation from his job as head usher at the Paramount Theater, and he drove us from Arlington, Massachusetts, to Henniker, New Hampshire, in the green Packard: Mama, Douglas, and me. Mrs. Behrendt’s farmhouse sat alone at the end of a long dirt road, near a field of tall feathery grass. Its white shingles shone in the afternoon sun, and inside, there was a smell that was old and clean, like the quilts piled in the wooden chest at the foot of the iron bed where I’d be sleeping. I could smell it in the faded wallpaper, too, breathing it in when I rested my cheek against the wall next to the bed. Faded brown stripes and small pink flowers. . . . . . . “Cele, get her out of there!” My father’s voice came through the door of the bathroom. My mother was scrubbing me with a rough washcloth while I shivered, standing in a cast-iron tub that had lion’s paws for feet. My mother jumped at the sound of my father’s voice. “Electrical storm!” he shouted, and she hurried now, rinsing soap from my chilled body with a spray hose attached to the faucet. I watched water cascade down my legs and swirl for a moment before the drain swallowed it with a groan. There was a loud, deep rumble outside the window. “What’s that?” My mother didn’t answer, hurrying, her freckled arms wrapping me in a towel, her hands briskly pulling my shirt and overalls on. . . . . . . I remember the old windows in that house, ripples in the glass that from certain angles looked purple. But this first evening, the parlor was dark except for a kerosene lamp on a sideboard and a candle in a jelly glass on a low table. The flame trembled like Shabbos candles in our darkened kitchen at home, blackout blinds pulled down for the war. My father was an air raid warden and wore a white helmet when he went out to make sure the enemy couldn’t see light coming from the houses on our street. “Sometimes we lose electricity in the storm,” Mrs. Behrendt said, “but it comes back.” She and my mother were sitting in chairs with wooden spindles for backs and flat ruffled cushions on the seats. Mrs. Behrendt held a man’s sock stretched over a darning egg. Candlelight picked out her silver thimble, and the darning needle in her large hand kept moving, crosshatching the thread to make a repair. Her hair was a knot on top of her head, and her face was creased. She looked kind and plain next to my mother, whose red hair and white arms had light coming from them. A wing chair half hid the tall man Mrs. Behrendt introduced as “Mr. Smith, my friend who comes to stay in the summer. Hermann, this is Judge Stone and Mrs. Stone and Douglas and Anna.” Mr. Smith dipped his head. “An honor, Judge.” My father’s lips curved upward. “No, no, I’m not a judge. It’s my name — George.” He made a point of pronouncing the r. “Ach, I forget the Boston accent.” Mrs. Behrendt’s head waggled, and everyone smiled. Despite my father’s denial, I could see him — a striking figure with prematurely silver hair and brilliant blue eyes — handing down the law from a high bench. Light streaked downward, splitting the sky, and seconds later thunder came, and the windows shook. “It’s about a mile away,” my father said. He was explaining to Douglas how you could count the seconds between lightning and thunder to see how close the storm was. Douglas’s pale oval face shone in the dark. “Light moves faster than sound, Annie” — my brother liked teaching me things. The lightning was a thin wire, white and kinked like a hair in Bubbe’s brush. A live thing that ripped through the sky and made the parlor brighter than sunlight. Mrs. Behrendt hurriedly took off her thimble and set it on the sideboard along with the darning needle and sock. “I’m scared,” I whispered, and my father picked me up and held me so I could see the trees waving their wild arms. “Is that safe?” my mother asked. “You don’t have to be afraid,” my father said in my ear. “It’s going farther away now.” I pressed my cheek against his shoulder and stared at the black sky. Mr. Smith’s voice came from the wing chair. “I was not quick enough to get my camera.” The flickering candle made his face light, then dark, letting me see just pieces of him: an eye, part of a long nose, and thin lips that wore a little smile. Douglas looked up at the word camera. He’d brought his new Brownie on the trip. “Can you take a picture when it’s this dark out?” he asked Mr. Smith. “Oh yes. You’d be surprised. Tomorrow, I show you how I photograph the hummingbirds.” “So clear!” Mrs. Behrendt offered. “Even though their wings beat fast, like an airplane propeller.” She shook her head at this wonder. “What sort of camera can do that?” my father asked. “Hasselblad,” Mr. Smith said, his voice going up and down like a dance. “It’s great for birds.” “That must be quite a camera,” my father said. “Where do they make those?” Mr. Smith was silent for a moment, then said, “Europe.” Rain pelted the windowpanes. “What brings you to New Hampshire, Mr. Smith?” “I vacation, like you. I like to photograph. The hummingbirds like to come to my friend Ursula’s flowers, so I catch them. With my lens.” . . . . . . All that night, the windows rattled in the room where I slept, loose in their frames. I could hear rain beating on the roof and against the panes. I’d asked my mother to leave my door partway open, but the electricity hadn’t come back on yet, and the hall outside was dark. I heard voices in the room next to mine, my mother murmuring something I couldn’t make out, and my father saying, “Smith, my eye.” His voice faded again, and then I heard “Fatherland.” I imagined a place where fathers talked to each other, explaining things like lightning and cameras. Maybe Mr. Smith was a father too. I drifted off then, to the sound of trees lashing the windows. . . . . . . The sun woke me. I dressed myself in the jumper folded on the chair beside my bed, the one with small red strawberries my mother had embroidered on the bib. I forced the buttons through tight buttonholes and squeezed my feet into my Mary Janes so I wouldn’t have to undo the buckles. Douglas was in his bedroom, still in his pj’s, reading. “That’s a B-52.” He pointed to a plane with puffy clouds and a square of sky behind it. It had a long silver nose and a kind of fin. “What are those dots coming out of its stomach?” “Bombs.” I peered at the dots. “They’re dropping them on Japs,” Douglas elaborated. “Are Japs the same as Nazis?” “They drop them on Nazis too. This one’s a B-17, it’s a Flying Fortress.” “What’s that?” “It has machine guns and armor. See, you’re an enemy plane trying to destroy me, but you can’t get me.” I ducked as Douglas’s arm swooped in figure eights around my head while he made airplane noises. Then he changed back to his explaining voice. “It can pinpoint a target so they know exactly where to drop a load of bombs and destroy it.” “What’s the target?” “It could be a ship. It could be a city. A bunch of bombers destroyed a whole city in Germany.” “Can the enemy get us?” “Course not. The war’s overseas. Far away from here.” Outside the window, leaves on the birch trees were nodding. Douglas’s face disappeared behind his book. I read its name: Military Aircraft. He was saying more names: Dive bomber. Torpedo bomber. B-29. Superfortress. B-52 was the one I would remember — the sky fish with black dots raining out of its middle. . . . . . . After breakfast, Douglas stood outside with Mr. Smith, watching for hummingbirds in the tall hollyhocks next to the house. “Would Anna like to see the hummingbirds?” Mr. Smith asked, as if Anna were some other girl he was asking about. My mother was suddenly standing next to me, wearing the dress that matched my jumper. “Mother-daughter outfit,” she’d called it, kneeling on the rug at home, carefully holding pins between her lips while she marked the hem with a thin square of chalk. Mr. Smith’s head bowed in greeting. My mother’s red lipstick mouth made a straight line. “Anna is coming for a walk with me,” she said, yanking me by the hand, as if I’d done something I shouldn’t have. “But,” I said. . . . . . . The rain from last night had left puddles we had to walk around where the road dipped. The soaked grass had begun to dry, and everything was stirring and waving: lush ferns bordering the field, leaves covering the branches, and the branches themselves. For a moment, everything held itself perfectly still, not breathing. Then the motion began again, and the soft hissing sound, like steam from a kettle, resumed. Swaying and hissing, then stillness, over and over. Tree trunks blinked — bright, dark, bright, dark — letting sunlight through, then covering themselves with leaf-shaped shadows. Thin wisps of clouds were pasted onto the shimmering sky. I watched as their shapes thinned and trailed away and new clouds came from nowhere. My mother gave a little shriek, tightening her grip on my hand. I saw her staring at what looked like a rope knotted on the path in front of us. No, not a rope, a stick that had broken off from a spotted brown branch. Then I saw an oval head that slowly turned and looked over its own back. Its tongue threaded in and out, in and out, faster than my breath. I leaned closer to look. “Don’t touch,” my mother said in a voice partway between breathing and speaking. “Let’s go.” “It won’t hurt you,” I said, echoing words I’d heard my father say, “if you don’t hurt it.” But my mother pulled me to the edge of the road and was walking fast — past what I knew I’d seen. I looked back and saw that it hadn’t moved except for its head and the darting tongue. As we walked, I kept turning to look, hoping to see it again. A glowing orange creature the size of my little finger swayed from side to side as it skittered on four tiny legs. I knew not to touch it. “I won’t hurt you,” I said, but its tail disappeared into a patch of dark moss. “I wish we lived in Henniker,” I said. A smile flitted across Mama’s face. “We’re having a nice vacation. We’ll be here until lunchtime on Friday. Isn’t that nice?” “What day is today?” “It’s Monday,” she said. “Yesterday was Sunday, remember?” “Do we have to leave?” She blinked. “Bubbe would miss us if we weren’t home on Friday night. Shabbos.” “Oh,” I said. Shabbos was when Bubbe lit candles and covered her eyes with her hands while she whispered softly. No milk till bedtime if the plates for supper were from the set with a picture of red flowers in the center — fleishig plates. “Maybe she’ll give me a piece of the challah dough so I can make a small one like I did before.” I remembered the little fistful of dough Bubbe had torn off for me. “Don’t patshke so much,” she’d said when she saw how grimy I’d made it, but she’d put it in the oven next to her grown-up loaf. “I like Shabbos,” I admitted. “That’s good, Anna. But — ” My mother took a breath. “What?” “When we’re in the house — when we’re with Mrs. Behrendt or Mr. Smith, or any other people — ” “What other people?” “If other guests come to stay,” she said. “Just listen. I don’t want you to say we’re going home for Shabbos.” “But we are, aren’t we? You just said.” “We don’t talk about that here.” She put a finger under my chin and made me look up. Some of the red had worn off her lips. “Do you understand?” “Why don’t we? My mother frowned, then said the words I hated: “You’ll understand when you’re older.” I’d heard that answer before, when I asked about babies, or about her little brother who’d died. It was no use begging. Her mouth was set. I didn’t want her to slap me — she’d done that once when I kept asking the same question, smiling and teasing her — but the word came out anyway. “Why ?” She shook her head as if she wasn’t going to tell me, then said, “It’s because of the war.” That word: war. What came to my mind then was the picture in Douglas’s book, the B-52. The dark specks that were bombs. My father’s heavy helmet. Blackout blinds you pulled down to fool the enemy. And now something else, something about us that I wasn’t allowed to tell. I understood without asking that none of us were to say it. Does Douglas know? I wanted to ask. And Daddy? But the lipstick mouth was firmly closed. What I knew then: Nothing I said was going to persuade her to open it. She wanted to teach me to close my mouth. . . . . . . There was something oracular about her utterances over the years, one explosive statement at a time: I hate my life as she scrubbed the kitchen floor on hands and knees. Decades later: I’ll never trust you again. Once, out of silence: I should have made you have that baby. And a rare concession, in her eighties: Oh well, you turned out all right. And when she lay helpless on a gurney in a dim corridor, waiting to be wheeled to a room with a bed: I know what’s going on — her eyes flicking open — I’m dying. Her sudden directness shocked me. My memory of how she’d evaded my question on that long-ago walk in the country had disappeared into the vault where I held things under pressure at a depth. But now some stray phenomenon — the odd shape made by a fold in the sheet, or a groan from the next room — had brought it to the surface. My body took on the tension I’d seen in her face and heard in her voice when I was six, as she’d willed me to gain control of my impulse to utter my thoughts aloud. I was a risk, a loose cannon — that much I’d grasped. But You’ll understand when you’re older — she’d been wrong about that. It was a promise time was powerless to keep. . . . . . . I’m still parsing that week in Mrs. Behrendt’s farmhouse. The obituary Google turned up on the internet had to be hers: One Ursula Behrendt had died peacefully at Concord Hospital in 1974, age seventy-eight, a widow survived by two daughters, a beloved grandson, and a generation of nieces and nephews. I still see her ample body in a cotton housedress, short sleeves showing the loose skin on her arms as she set a rhubarb pie on the breakfast table or mended a sock — Mr. Smith’s? — in the candlelit parlor. She could have been fifty, already a widow, when we stayed in her house as paying guests. From the worn, cared-for look of things, she’d lived in the farmhouse for decades. I imagine her coming to the States from Brandenburg in her twenties with a young husband, looking for land to farm and falling in love with a sparsely populated town between two rivers. Hermann Smith — or Schmidt, as my father suspected — has proved untraceable. I imagine him alive somewhere, an old man still photographing wings that move faster than the human eye can see. Now I picture Mrs. Behrendt and my mother sitting side by side in the dim parlor on the night of the thunderstorm, each woman guarding her own secrets, and wonder which of them was more reluctant to share her history — a question I could hardly have uttered then. I wish now that I’d asked my brother what he remembered about our brief stay in Henniker. Maybe Dad had talked with him about U-boats that landed spies on the coast, or about cameras with shutter speeds that could freeze action imperceptible to the human eye. But my conversations with Douglas when he was alive hadn’t reached as far back as the war. And maybe, like me, he’d all but forgotten those few days. . . . . . . Out of nowhere I hear my mother’s voice saying, I wasn’t born yesterday. I feel her tugging at my hand, pulling me. And there’s Mr. Smith, watching with his little smile. As with my mother, something about him is formidable and severe, and yet I think I hear a note of kindness in his voice. Is he our friend or our enemy? It’s hard to tell what his eyes are saying behind round glasses. I’m waiting for him to lift me up in his arms so that I can see the hummingbird darting its long thin beak into the dark red center — velvety, almost black — of a hollyhock. The bird is hovering, flying backward. Never have I seen such beauty.
Read MoreIn Penal Colony ×
At my home in Seoul, in the middle of the night, long after dinnertime, though not because I was hungry, I went to the kitchen at the end of a vacant series of thoughts and, as if in a daze, unthinkingly poured water into a pot, set it on the stove, and lit the gas, and looking at the water boil like someone also in a daze, yet someone different from the one who poured water into the pot and set it on the stove, forgetting what I’d just done, also unthinkingly cooking some noodles in the pot, and again, like a third person, different from the one who poured water into the pot and set it on the stove and the one who cooked noodles in the pot, looking at the strands of noodles flailing uncontrollably in the boiling water, I wondered why looking at that made my thoughts spiral uncontrollably, why I was gripped by an urge to turn off the stove, rush out of the house, and run somewhere like a reservoir in the night — if I could do as I pleased, take the noodles flailing in the boiling water and pour them into the reservoir (I felt that if I did so, the noodle strands would swim in the reservoir all night long, flailing like strange creatures) — and actually, one reservoir in the suburbs of Seoul came to mind, though I didn’t run there, and some days later, at a small studio I rented in the small city of × in southern France, also in the middle of the night, boiling noodles at the end of some thought — it was like I had teleported from boiling noodles at my house to boiling noodles in × — looking at the strands of noodles flailing uncontrollably in the boiling water, I was gripped by an urge to turn off the stove, rush out of the studio, and run somewhere like a reservoir in the night, and though I also actually found a reservoir in the suburbs of × on a map, I didn’t run there, and I thought why a reservoir and not a river or an ocean or a lake or a canal or a pond, but I wasn’t sure. Originally I intended to write about “a person who might or might not die after writing a story about a person who died after going to Venice and writing a story called ‘Death in Gangwon Province,’ or might or might not die after writing a story about a person who might or might not die after going to Gangwon Province and writing a story called ‘Death in Venice,’” as a story that actually had that long title, and I had been writing it, but at some point it came to a stop and there was no further progress, and the story wasn’t about a person who goes somewhere, picks up a stone there, and discards it elsewhere after going there, then picks up a stone elsewhere and discards it somewhere else again, but the picking up and discarding of stones was to occupy a large part of the story, and though not in order to write this story, I had long been picking up stones in many places and discarding stones I had picked up in many places, and so I thought it only natural that I would write a story about a person who picks up and discards stones. I brought a stone I picked up by the Mississippi River a long time ago to Korea and discarded it on a mountain in Gangwon Province, discarded a stone I picked up on a mountain in Gangwon Province in a forest in Hawaii, discarded a stone I picked up in a forest in Hawaii at Sandwich Bay in Britain by the Strait of Dover (there, along the long pebbled coast, all sorts of trash, perhaps discarded by the British or washed ashore by the tides of the Strait of Dover from the Continent, particularly France, was endlessly strewn, forming a kind of spectacle like the emperor-penguin-filled shores of Antarctica, yet it didn’t seem that the locals left the trash untouched so that it would not cease to be the kind of spectacle it was, and perhaps somewhere on the Continent, particularly somewhere in France, there was a coast where trash discarded by the British, also carried across the Strait of Dover, was also forming a kind of spectacle), and, as soon as I arrived in ×, discarded a stone I picked up at Sandwich Bay in Britain at nearby Montagne Sainte-Victoire after going there, and while discarding a stone at Montagne Sainte-Victoire, hoping the stone from the British coast of the Strait of Dover might live another life at Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a limestone ridge stretching out long like a folding screen, I thought my strange habit of picking up a stone somewhere and discarding it elsewhere could come to an end with this, but I had already picked up a stone from Montagne Sainte-Victoire, where countless stones lay scattered, and because of that, my strange habit of picking up a stone somewhere and discarding it elsewhere might not have ended yet. But I thought picking up a stone somewhere and discarding it elsewhere, that is, to make the stones do a kind of unknowable relay, wasn’t for the stones’ sake and was even less for my own, and yet when faced with the natural question, then for whose sake was it, I could answer, and my answer was that it wasn’t for anyone’s sake. Anyway, the stones seemed fine with wherever they were, they seemed not to mind wherever they were, and I saw this through the stones that I picked up somewhere and discarded elsewhere, which showed no discontent or misery, and the stones always seemed ready to accept a new fate at a new place after being moved, yet this couldn’t be the reason I picked up stones and moved them elsewhere either. Anyway, stones were one of the rare things I liked, and I liked their hard insensibility, their insensible hardness, their expressionlessness, their indifference, and though stones mostly didn’t catch my eye or catch my heart, at times there were stones that caught my eye, even caught my heart, yet this couldn’t be the reason I picked up stones and moved them elsewhere either, because I mostly ignored the stones that caught my eye or caught my heart and instead picked up any stone, whichever I could lay my hands on, and took it elsewhere to discard it. I wasn’t sure when I’d taken to picking up a stone somewhere and discarding it elsewhere. Having given up on writing about “a person who might or might not die after writing a story about a person who died after going to Venice and writing a story called ‘Death in Gangwon Province,’ or might or might not die after writing a story about a person who might or might not die after going to Gangwon Province and writing a story called ‘Death in Venice,’” as a story that actually had that long title, in which a person picks up a stone and takes it elsewhere — maybe the story itself would be shorter than its title — one day, in a town in Gangwon Province, I went to a thoracic surgeon after feeling intense pain, as if a heavy stone were inside my chest, and the elderly doctor, after taking a chest X-ray and examining it, said, I don’t see a chest, even birds and reptiles have chests, am I looking at a fish, and looked at me as if I were a fish and not a human being, and when I said, don’t fish have chests too, he said, do they, in an unsure tone, this time looking at me as if at a stone — and I nearly said, don’t stones have chests too, and if I had, he might’ve said, do they — and he brought me to an operating room and, without injecting anesthetic, anesthetized me with a penetrating stare into my eyes as if to hypnotize me, and I couldn’t tell what surgery he performed, but he said, as if amused, that he had learned something else, that I had an incurable disease that made my neck keep growing longer, and I was thinking, in that case I’d have no choice but to live watching my neck keep growing, when he said, there’s no way to stop the neck from growing longer, but we can certainly watch how long it’ll grow, as if he was full of anticipation, and when I asked, will my neck grow without end, he said, it will grow without end, and though it can’t be said it’ll continue to grow after you die, it won’t matter then, so don’t worry, speaking as if it were his own problem, and he showed me an oval-shaped stone the size of an egg, saying he had taken it out of me and that he wasn’t sure whether the stone had anything to do with the neck growing, and thinking that a neck growing must be better than a tail growing out and growing, and not ending with taking the stone like some souvenir and throwing it out after going to a deep forest in Gangwon Province, after dreaming of going somewhere while repeating to myself that I should pick up a stone in a forest in Gangwon Province and go to Venice to discard it there, I thought about writing a story set in Gangwon Province, in a deep forest in Gangwon Province, about two people who are quite close in distance to each other and thus feel close to each other, but don’t ever come across each other or exchange words, but only look at each other secretly, and often pull up their loose and shabby green pants that keep falling because they don’t have a belt, always letting out deep sighs like they cannot breathe normally, and think of themselves a poacher, and at the same time an antipoaching ranger, but truth be told, neither is the poacher a poacher nor the antipoaching ranger an antipoaching ranger, and, nevertheless, thinking of themselves as a poacher, and at the same time an antipoaching ranger, spend time sneering at their own green pants, and at the same time at themselves for thinking of themselves as both a poacher and an antipoaching ranger, and at each other, who are at the same time themselves, because they know only how to sneer, not how to smile, and so do not smile but only sneer, and continue to pick up stones and discard stones picked up — their sneering at each other and at themselves was to occupy a large part of the story — but there also was no progress, and in the two stories, where because there was no progress it was unknown how they would unfold, stones could be an important motif, but that gave no clue as to why I kept picking up a stone somewhere and discarding it elsewhere either. Originally, having returned from a long trip somewhere and having no plans to go anywhere, I was in a state of having been, for some unclear reason, invited to the house of a woman I knew in Paris, France, and though for some time I thought about going there, for some reason I kept postponing going to the house of a woman I knew in Paris, France, where the real Eiffel Tower is, and while continuing to postpone in that way, at the same time thinking it would be fine in the end not to go there, I vaguely thought of going instead to somewhere like Paris, a town in Texas, or Paris, a town in Tennessee, and I somehow found out that there are fifteen places in America named after Paris, France, and that many of them, as a sign of respect to Paris, France, had built an Eiffel Tower, and in accordance with that foolish tradition, in 1993 the people of Paris, Tennessee, built an 18-meter-tall Eiffel Tower replica, and in that same year, the boilermakers in Paris, Texas, the second-largest Paris in the world, built a 20-meter-tall Eiffel Tower replica, and the tower in Paris, Texas, now is one that was rebuilt, the first Eiffel Tower replica, made of wood, having later been destroyed by a tornado, and when in 1998 a 21.3-meter-tall Eiffel Tower was built in Paris, Tennessee, the people of Paris, Texas, in response, put a giant red cowboy hat on top of their tower to make theirs a little taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tennessee, but as Las Vegas, Nevada, which has nothing to do with Paris, France, built a 165-meter-tall Eiffel Tower replica, almost half the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, the competition of building taller Eiffel Towers replicas came to an end, and Paris, Texas, and Paris, Tennessee, had to give up forever their dream of building the world’s second-tallest Eiffel Tower, and I wanted to visit those places for the sole reason that people who had forever given up that dream lived there. At my home there were a few Eiffel Tower replicas, some I had bought, others I had been given as gifts, not enough to call a collection, not only from Paris, France, but from places around the world named Paris, and one night, drunk, I gathered them all together and looked at them, thinking of the various Eiffel Towers I had seen, including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas, and the very pathetic Eiffel Tower in Prague, Czech Republic, which didn’t even reach half the height of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas, and out of them all, I pictured a scene of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, made of wood and later destroyed by a tornado, being destroyed and swept away by the tornado, and thought that the sight of the Eiffel Tower being destroyed and swept away by the tornado must have been impressive, and I was curious who had made the wooden tower, whether without the slightest thought it could be destroyed and swept away by a tornado, or not unaware that it could be destroyed and swept away by a tornado, or so that it would be easily destroyed and swept away by a tornado — I was leaning toward the last, and I thought that they might’ve regularly devised an Eiffel Tower swept away by a tornado, perhaps from the outset planning it to be swept away by a tornado, designing it so that it would not withstand a tornado beyond a certain intensity and be swept away, and if they had done so, the tower would have gained the nickname “an Eiffel Tower swept away by a tornado,” becoming very famous, perhaps even Texas’s iconic symbol (and it would also have been amusing if someone designed a tower that would collapse after a certain amount of time had passed) — and when they planned to build or built that tower, whether there had been anyone among the people there who had pointed that out to them, and I wanted to go to Paris, Texas, to confirm that fact for myself, and maybe I could confirm that fact at a record archive that archives even the most trivial records, or find out what happened exactly through someone who lives there, and maybe, though the happening of the Eiffel Tower being destroyed and swept away by a tornado wasn’t the biggest happening in that town, it remained a big happening in the memories of the people there, and there might’ve been someone who could tell me facts unknown about that happening, and maybe the person who built the Eiffel Tower was still alive, and I might’ve met them in person and heard about it from them, and maybe they could have told it as it was or with something left out or added, but in reality there was no way I would go to Paris, Texas, and confirm the facts related to the Eiffel Tower that had been destroyed by the tornado, and some things were better thought than actually done, some felt more done by thinking alone than by actually doing, and this too was like that. Still, I thought it didn’t matter if I went to Paris, Texas, and it didn’t matter at all even if I left there without confirming anything, and maybe, a little dispirited at not having confirmed anything, I might have bought and brought back from a souvenir shop in Paris, Texas, a wooden or steel Eiffel Tower, which was either a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, or a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, which was the replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. For a while before coming to ×, I’d been thinking that now all that remained was to go, or not to go, to Paris, Texas, or Paris, Tennessee, and instead I ended up coming to ×, but in truth it didn’t matter where I went or didn’t, didn’t matter where I was or wasn’t, and wherever I ended up, enduring the time there made no difference. From a certain point on, every place I went felt like the end of the world, and every place I ended up felt like a penal colony, and it felt like there was nowhere left to go from there, and × felt like the end of the penal colony, and so × seemed an appropriate place to write something titled “In the Penal Colony,” and after coming to Penal Colony × I thought about writing something titled “In Penal Colony ×.”
Read MoreWhat the Photos Didn’t Reveal
After the fact, after the sheriff’s department wrapped up its investigation and people had begun to move on, the photos on the wife’s phone came into my possession. How this happened, I’m not at liberty to disclose (or actually, I choose not to, at least not for the purposes of this story, which in any case isn’t much more than a rough go at the screenplay to follow). Suffice to say I have my means and that the wife’s sister, Lorna, has given me her blessing because she wants the story told in a more poignant and imaginative way than what the news outlets have been able to muster, and if we’ve discussed various A-listers who might be induced to play her sister, Pili, and Pili’s husband, Louis, that’s only to be expected — that’s the way the industry works, top to bottom, from the studio heads to the showrunners to the producers and writers and the earbud guys on the security detail, everybody envisioning the best-case scenario and hoping, literally, for the stars to align. But of course you’ve got to have a script first, and to have a script you’ve got to have a story, and this one has all the elements, believe me. A family goes for a hike and disappears, husband, wife, infant, dog. They’re experienced hikers in their thirties, the infant smeared with sunblock and accustomed to bumping along in his BabyBjörn backpack for hours at a time through the chaparral and up and down the most challenging grades, the dog an indefatigable Jack Russell named Harvey. It’s a Sunday in August and this is a day hike only, since both Pili and Louis have work the next morning (in the actual case, he was an aerospace engineer commuting three days a week to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and she the assistant manager of the local B of A branch, but if we go for a fictionalized version, which is my preference, give them any professions you want; I’d like him better as a climate scientist modeling future weather patterns and her as an influencer keying on hiking apparel, which would underscore the irony — and tragedy — of what befell them). At any rate, no one hears from them, and when the nanny shows up at the house at seven on Monday morning, no one’s home, no baby squalling, no terrier ricocheting off her shins, no odor of cooking, no Pili, no Louis. She tries their cell phones, but there’s no answer, so she calls Lorna, the sister. Lorna wasn’t all that worried, at least not at first. She too tried their cells and came up with nothing, and she told the nanny to just tidy up as usual and check back with her the following day. The most likely explanation was that Pili and Louis had gone for a day hike and most likely in the local mountains since they had work in the morning. They were both fit, Louis a dedicated swimmer and jogger and her sister a Pilates fanatic. The only thing she could think was that their car had broken down, though it was only two years old, and even if it had, they carried Triple A, so that wouldn’t have been a problem. Or maybe, she thought, because it had been so hot lately, they’d treated themselves to a motel with a pool and Jacuzzi after a sweltering hike and slept through the alarm the next morning, the morning neither of them showed up for work and the nanny found the door locked and the alarm set and nobody home. They were welcome to their privacy in any case — and spontaneity, if that was what this was. If they wanted to shut off their phones and have time to themselves, that was between them and whoever oversaw their schedules at work. A pool. A Jacuzzi. Best-case scenario. A day later, when there was no word from either of them, she called the police, and the police put out an alert. The day was scorching, up into triple digits by late afternoon. The sun was like a hammer. Nobody was going anywhere. And yet somebody must have been out there, because a call came in about a car that matched the description of their vehicle, which had been found at the Pinyon Canyon trailhead in the national forest, not twenty-five miles from their apartment in downtown San Roque. Search and Rescue went into action, though by the time they got to the trailhead, night was coming on with its spooky primordial hush, the canyons haunted, snakes and scorpions and whatever else rustling around in the undergrowth. Arroyo toads. Roadrunners. (Do they have roadrunners out there? I’ll have to look that up.) It wasn’t till 3:00 a.m. that two of the searchers came across the family’s bodies at the base of the steepest section of the loop trail, the section that would have led them back to their car in just over a mile and a half. The husband, Louis, illuminated by the thin tubes of light cast by the headlamps the searchers wore, was sitting upright, frozen in position, the dog sprawled beside him and the child laid out on a thin cloth blanket at his feet. Pili was found a hundred yards farther up the slope. There were no signs of foul play, just the night and the shadowy motionless forms beside the path. Later that day, it was all over the news. Which was when I got involved, the story irresistible — the tragedy, the mystery, the loss of innocent lives, nature in the raw, human fragility — but I was on another project then, an interracial love story set in a hippie commune in the late 1960s, which, unfortunately, never got off the ground. I saved the news clippings, though, and downloaded a dozen online stories, all of which reproduced the same scant frustrating details that only served to deepen the intrigue. By the time I got around to contacting Lorna, a month later, there’d been two or three others ahead of me, looking for background on the family, facts to flesh things out, and all of them seeing the same potential in the story I saw, but for one reason or another, Lorna didn’t hit it off with any of them, who, as she put it, “are only interested in sensationalizing the story,” and, left unsaid, profiting off it. Which, of course, I intended to do myself — that’s what this business is about — but my approach is subtler, classier, more interested in the characters as living, breathing human beings and not just victims. I wanted to get to the essence, wanted to know not just what happened but how it affected their understanding of themselves and the world that had suddenly turned on them in such a harsh and unforgiving way. To this point, the police hadn’t weighed in, their investigation ongoing. Healthy people didn’t just sit down and die — there had to be some X factor involved. Almost immediately, investigators ruled out murder (no signs of trauma) and suicide (toxicology reports showed no trace of any foreign substances in the victims’ blood). There was speculation that they might have refilled their water bladder from the thin trickle of a creek at the bottom of the canyon (if they could have managed to negotiate those slick handholdless cliffs that were like something out of North Face, only without the snow) and somehow ingested toxins from a mineral seep or maybe an algae bloom, but testing revealed nothing of the sort. Lorna twisted in agony over the uncertainty of it as day after day went by and nothing was settled, no relief, no closure. I was on the phone with her then, several nights running, comforting her, even before we met face-to-face. When finally the police issued their report, it was a monumental letdown, the cause of death given as heat exhaustion. Heat exhaustion? It didn’t seem possible. Even the dog? I really couldn’t get my head around it — so you got overheated, so you felt exhausted, but did that mean you were looking at something fatal? Those of you who follow the news will probably know the story from here, about how I got involved and found myself in the deepest well of the deepest shit, but that’s another movie (and who are we going to get to play me, I wonder? Somebody younger, slimmer, with more and better distributed hair and a photoshopped neck). Believe me, I learned a lot of things on a lot of levels from this story, not only about the business I’m in but also about my own judgment or lack of it and what that family was really facing out there in the wild — but maybe the best way to approach it for my purposes here is the photos. And the texts, don’t forget the texts. . . . . . . The first photo, taken at 7:20 a.m., is a standard family selfie, Pili and Louis smiling into the camera, the infant in her arms, the dog — wriggling — in his. The backdrop is the canyon itself, a war of paled-out colors glazed with sun, and no indication that the thermometer was going to top out at 110 that afternoon, because it was 7:30 in the morning and a nice equable 69 degrees, according to Google Weather. What can I say about this picture? It’s so ordinary, so usual, you wouldn’t have picked it out of ten thousand just like it. Happy family, happy dog. A day off. A small adventure. Secreted in Pili’s daypack, along with the bladder that held three liters of water, were the two ten-ounce bags of Lay’s potato chips and the jack cheese–and-onion sandwiches on rye, with sprouts and Dijon mustard, they intended to savor in some shady nook at the bottom of the trail before they climbed back up out of the canyon and drove home and put their feet up and watched something on Netflix or HBO with the air conditioner on full blast. The next photo, time-stamped at 8:01, shows the trail ahead of them, an expanse of foot-worn dirt wide enough to accommodate two people abreast and rising to a point in the near distance marked by a yellowish (sandstone?) boulder that looks massive, though it’s hard to tell, because there’s nothing there for perspective. But photo number three puts Pili into the picture, slouching against the boulder (yes, it’s big, very big, like a couple of SUVs stacked one atop the other) and smiling at the photographer, Louis. Behind her, the trail narrows and plunges down a steep grade to where you can see the thin reflective band of the creek far below. She’s wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt as blue as the sky rearing above her. The sun is there, a blast of light caught in the upper lefthand corner, obliterating its designated segment of the sky. Then they’re going down the trail, Louis taking deliberate steps with the baby on his back, careful not to lose his footing on the scree here, feeling the steepness of the descent tugging at his knees and the long muscles of his thighs — the quadriceps — and no time to stop for pictures, because this is what they’ve come for, the challenge of the descent that gives you that natural bodily rush that’s like being high on the purest drug in the world. Everything’s loose underfoot, random pebbles shooting out from the soles of his boots as if he’s walking on marbles, and it’s a question of bracing himself, which he does, pushing off one boulder after another, grabbing hold of mesquite branches as if they’re lifelines, the sun knifing in under the brim of the baseball cap he’s wearing (the Angels, a loser team; for the movie, I’d give him a Dodgers cap). But the thing is, he’s concerned — wouldn’t want to take a tumble with the baby — but confident too, because this is the sort of thing he’s done a thousand times, before and after the baby, even while Pili was pregnant, because it’s in his DNA, in Pili’s too. And don’t call them selfish or risk-takers or anything like that — they knew what they were doing, and as parents, what better way to awaken a love of nature in the kid from the very earliest age? Next in the sequence is a photo taken at 9:22, another family selfie, though the dog isn’t in it, and the baby in his pack is just a shadow clinging to his father’s back, probably asleep at this point. There’s no trace of anything unusual in either of their faces, and here they are smiling for the camera, though they’re both sweating and Pili’s tee is damp with it, gone from sky blue to a dark azure. She’s very pretty, by the way, confident eyes, dimples, her hair pulled back and sculpting her face, and Louis is better-looking than average himself. Not that it matters, because the actors we have in mind are the very epitome of beauty, which is why they’re the A-list actors recognized around the world and the rest of us aren’t. I’m just mentioning Pili’s and Louis’s looks because of the epic finality of what happened here — and I know, I know, tragedy strikes the attractive and unattractive alike, we’re all susceptible, life a crapshoot, et cetera, but still, they were a handsome couple. And where are they in this shot? Have they made it all the way down to the narrow bleached-out ridge above the streambed? Or are they on their way back up? Hard to say. When I went down there myself, documenting practically every step on my smartphone, I couldn’t manage to place this shot at all. It was hot, though, I can tell you that, and no shade, not a scrap of it, nothing. What made it even worse was that so much of the vegetation had burned off in the last big fire here, so that for long stretches there weren’t even any bushes to block the sun, however negligibly. Me? I almost died out there — and I was lugging two gallon jugs of Crystal Geyser spring water that felt like bowling balls careening around in my backpack. Beyond that it was sunblock, a sandwich, binoculars, though if I had it to do over I’d have brought a parasol at least and, though it might seem ridiculous when you’re talking temps over a hundred, one of those space blankets for the temperature drop at night. But I didn’t plan on being there overnight. And they didn’t either. Day hike, right? Not a major expedition, not a camping trip, not a night hike. But the real kicker, the thing that condemned them and pushed me to the brink myself, was the lack of cell reception out there, but then what are you going to do, carry a rocket pack? Wave at the space station when it comes whipping by overhead? Send up carrier pigeons? (Which would have died of heatstroke anyway.) The fifth picture, taken at 11:30, before things started to go south in a hurry, is just a conventional shot of the scenery, the trail, the shrubs, the distant ridge above, the unfiltered sky. They were beginning to feel the stress at this point, the baby wrapping himself around a thin choking wail of distress, the dog panting like a machine. How much water was left in the bladder? Was the baby okay? Was the dog? And how much farther did they have to go, anyway — it was just two miles, wasn’t it? Two miles was nothing. But it was hot, hotter than it had any right to be, and the way back was all uphill. “We’ve got to stop,” she said. Heat exhaustion leads to heatstroke, so Google says. Your body temperature rises, your muscles cramp, your head pounds, your skin turns a bright searing red and it’s hot to the touch, as if you have a fever — which you do, a full-body fever that can go as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and the worst thing is you stop sweating to conserve water, cutting off the body’s internal air conditioner. Louis saw the blaze of color in his wife’s face, and all he could think was that she had the worst sunburn of her life. He said, “I didn’t realize it was going to be this hot.” “Give me the baby,” she said. So they stopped — right there in the middle of the trail. Everything was bleached of color, but for the crippled black limbs of the shrubs, rocks like rotting teeth, the whole scene neutralized under the blast of the sun, which was directly overhead now. (This was a place I was able to locate and photograph, incidentally, under the same blast of that sun, albeit a month later, and if I felt sick, if I felt desperate, just imagine what they must have been going through. I didn’t have a baby. I didn’t have a dog. Or a spouse. It was just me, and that was burden enough.) Louis positioned himself to shade Pili as she laid the baby out on his little blanket (blue horses, blue cowboys, a scamper of little pink dogies) and changed him and tried to cool him with the last few mouthfuls of water from the bladder, but here was the dog, panting and nosing in, licking the moisture from the baby’s face even as Pili pushed him away. The baby’s mouth was thick with some kind of phlegm or froth, which she extracted with her fingers so she could put him to her breast and feed him, revive him, bring him back. But the milk wouldn’t come. There was nothing left in her to spare. It was a moment, and though I have no ambitions to direct, not now or down the line either, I can’t help envisioning our top-of-the-wish-list actress here, emoting from the very pit of her being, her face a bright red blister squeezed around peeling lips and the farthest of faraway looks trapped in her eyes. (And no, I’m not going to name her because I don’t want to risk jinxing things at this stage of the game, okay?) The question is, what was Pili thinking? And Louis, what about him? Which of them knew first? Or was it just then dawning on them simultaneously? They were in trouble, sure, but there were less than two miles to go, and if they could just . . . get moving again . . . they’d be back at the car, in the car, with the air conditioner cranked and bottles of Fiji Water pressed to their lips . . . Then there were the texts. This was the most poignant thing of all, just heartbreaking, believe me, because pictures are only pictures, and here was the real deal — their fear and desperation tapped across the screen in real time. The first text went out to 911 at 11:45 — or would have, but for the way the mountains blocked their signal. It read: Can you help us? On Arroyo Seco Trail, out of water, baby overheating. The second, which they tried to send from farther up the trail, was recorded ten minutes later. Emergency! it read. Baby in distress. Arroyo Seco Trail near junction of Pinyon. Need help! At this point, Louis had begun to fade. His speech was slurred and his eyes were losing focus. In the next moment, he sat heavily, as if somebody had pulled a chair out from under him. The dog laid its head in his lap, hyperventilating, its tongue beating at its dried-out lips as if it could somehow find moisture there. And the baby — the baby was silent, depleted, no more whimpering or fussing, a good baby, the best, no trouble at all, never any trouble. The baby. The baby. The baby. Pili was feeling disoriented herself. She didn’t know what was happening — how could she? Again, she was an experienced hiker — she blogged about it, in fact, at least in my telling — and she must have heard all the warnings time and again, even transmitted them to her followers (who were in the thousands, very respectable; she was an authority, and her savvy about hiking paraphernalia and apparel was second to none), but warnings were for other people, weren’t they, not for her, not for Louis, not for her family . . . So it was hot. She’d been hot before. She’d hiked Death Valley, albeit in spring, and the Santa Catalinas, outside of Tucson, and she’d never had a problem. She was fit. Supremely fit. A lot better equipped to handle backcountry conditions than most people. The thing with the heat is that it affects your thinking, as if you’ve been drinking on an empty stomach. Everything slows down on you, and you can’t seem to find your feet or remember where you are or even who you are. That was my experience, anyway. Maybe I’m not as young and fit as Pili and Louis were (I’m fifty-two, and of course, my profession does involve sitting behind a desk for hours at a stretch), but I’m a power walker and I do try to get out and exercise my legs most days, so I wasn’t a total dud. And yes, I could stand to lose some weight — who couldn’t? But I stopped smoking years ago, and I never touch a drink before five o’clock, depending on who I’m with and whether it counts as an official meeting or not. Of course, at this point you might ask why I bothered to go out there and put myself at risk in the first place, which was my girlfriend Becca’s reaction. “Can’t you just make it up?” she demanded, giving me her acidic/incredulous look as I stuffed things in my backpack the day before I drove all the way out there from L.A., and I told her what I’m going to tell you — nothing beats authenticity, and I pride myself as a writer who gets it right every time out. If I’m going to presume to know what my characters are feeling under duress, then I need to feel it myself. Call it a kind of method acting for the page. . . . . . . Pili was the fitter of the two — or maybe she handled the heat marginally better, everyone’s susceptibility as different as their genetic makeup — but at this point it was adrenaline that was keeping her going. She had to get up that hill, get to the car, dial 911. She pictured an ambulance, stretchers, a helicopter — wasn’t that the way they did it for the extreme cases, fly in with a salvatory roar and the big rotors beating at the air? She wanted to tell Louis what she was doing so he wouldn’t think she was deserting him, but words form on the tongue, and her tongue had lost its elasticity, as if it were an anonymous lump of meat someone had jammed between her teeth, so she gestured to him, dipping one shoulder and pointing up the trail ahead. He didn’t respond. His breathing was rapid, his eyes fixed on something she couldn’t see, something in the distance, where the sun came down to pound the rock ledges that were the naked skin of the mountain and so pocked with blemishes she couldn’t begin to take them all in. What I wanted was for her to say something and him to respond, and it didn’t have to be a major speech, which wouldn’t work under the circumstances, but just the rudimentary syllables we fall back on when everything else is stripped away. “I’m going to get help,” she said, and mustering everything he had left, he murmured, “Quick, make it quick — ” and there was no more to say. He was sitting upright still, shielding the baby from the sun in the irregular patch of shade cast by his torso. The dog was stretched out beside him, eyes shut, tail limp. “Okay,” she said, and repeated herself, “okay,” and found herself moving, thinking, The baby, the baby, the baby. She kept her head down, watching her feet. She tried to count her steps as a kind of mantra to distract herself from the way the trail just kept rising and rising, but she had the worst headache of her life and couldn’t concentrate even on a task as rudimentary as that — ten became nine and nine became twenty and twenty was two hundred, or was it three? Her vision began to blur. It was all she could do just to maintain her balance. Ultimately, the dirt was all there was, dirt ground to dust, to particles, each of the millions upon millions of them coruscating like miniature stars in their own miniature galaxies, which was exactly what I was seeing when finally I had to give it up and collapse in the pathetic strip of shade cast by an outcrop just off the trail. I was in trouble and I knew it. My feet were blistered. The back of my neck was so sunburned, the skin was already flaking. I had half a jug of water left at that point, and I lifted it to my mouth, all the while telling myself I had to conserve it even as I dug out my phone and texted the first futile SOS. Call me a fool. Tell me I deserved what was coming to me. Tell me I asked for it. But unlike Pili and Louis, I’d let somebody know where I was going (Becca), and though I’d tried to downplay any potential danger with her — “It’s a hike, that’s all, and I’m totally prepared, trust me” — she insisted I call her when I got back to the car. “And if I don’t?” I said, just to mess with her, and she said, “Those people died out there.” But Pili. She thought the incline was evening out, that she was almost at the top, and it energized her, but then she made the mistake of looking back over her shoulder and saw Louis, the dog, and the baby right there behind her, so close she could have thrown a stone and hit them. Everything was jumbled in her mind at this point. Her blood pressure was dropping. She couldn’t swallow. Why she’d gone off the trail was anybody’s guess, but they found her in the chaparral, stretched out at full length, as if she were home asleep in bed. I was luckier. The water held out, sip by precious sip, until night came creeping up the canyon walls and the sky overhead went black and the heat became the cold, and I shivered till dawn and got up and started off in the wrong direction. At some point, I heard voices and shouted out for help, and there they were, two guys in khaki shorts and long-sleeved shirts who could have been the same pair who’d found Pili and Louis and the baby, but weren’t. . . . . . . The county sheriff was furious with me. He read me the riot act about wasting the department’s time and resources and needlessly putting the lives of the rescue party at risk, let alone getting them out of bed in the middle of the night. “What do you think this is, a game?” he demanded, sitting there in the cab of a 4x4 parked at the trailhead, the red light revolving fitfully, the sun just putting in an appearance over the peak behind us, but I wasn’t going to go there. I told him I was fine and insisted I didn’t need any medical attention — just water, thank you — which to my mind put an end to it. “Is that it?” I demanded. “Am I free to go?” In the article the local paper ran (and the news services picked up), he made a number of unflattering insinuations about my state of mind and my character too. “Let the family mourn,” he said. “Respect people’s feelings. A stunt like this just makes things harder on everybody. And for what — a movie?” Becca took a similar tack when I got home, but I really couldn’t understand her, because isn’t tragedy what stories, novels, and screenplays are all about? That and love, which in most cases is a kind of tragedy in itself. I brooded over it for a day or two, and then I began to rethink the whole thing. Pili and Louis were real — actual people in the actual world, not just verbal constructs on a computer screen, and they deserved more. Much more. They’d suffered and died through no fault of their own, and I realized it was in my power to resurrect them, defy the odds, give the audience what they wanted, what I wanted, what we all want. And the infant, what about the infant who never had a chance at life? I see I haven’t even named him here, as if he were no more than a prop, and that’s just wrong. Inexcusable. I don’t know what I was thinking. He was eleven months old. His name was Aaron Joshua Lingermann, and he had his father’s coloring and his mother’s dancing hazel eyes. Under other circumstances — if it had been less hot, if the trail hadn’t been so steep, if the fire hadn’t burned off all the cover, if their water had held out — he would have made it. And maybe, with a little luck, he would have lived a long and full and rich and surprising life. I was thinking of titling the script Can You Help Us?, by the way, but Becca thought it was too vague, because who’s the first pronoun referring to? Me? You? Everybody in the world who wasn’t out there on that sun-blasted trail on what Google says was the third-hottest day of the year? I like the existential pull of it — Can you help? Can you? Can anybody? — but where’s the hope? What’s the upside? How is the audience going to feel when the lights come up? I could have been dead out there myself, but that didn’t happen, did it? What I want is for you to see that ridge looming above Pili till it might as well be a fragment of the sky. I want you to feel the weight of the sun, taste the aridity in the back of her throat, hear the pounding of her heart. Look at her, watch her: She’s an iron woman, unconquerable, indomitable, forcing herself upward step by agonizing step, her face clenched, her eyes gone hard. Up she goes, up and up, the camera tracking her from all angles . . . until at the crucial moment, when everything hangs in the balance, there she is at the top, her figure triumphantly outlined against the blue infinitude of the sky. We see the rutted dirt lot with its fringe of spindly brush and a faded metal sign warning of a puma sighting on a date long expired. Tire tracks. A crushed can or two. And the car, right there before her, right where they’d left it. In the next moment, she’s got a water bottle pressed to her lips and her fingers are working at the keypad of her phone, and then she’s hurrying back down the trail with water for Louis, the baby, the dog, and before she’s halfway down, here comes the chopper in a starburst of light. What world is this? The world idealized, the way it should be, the way it has to be if we’re going to go on living in it, this world, our world. Cut to Louis’s face. His eyes flicker open. Everything is hushed. The camera draws back until we can see the baby and the dog lying beside him, and it holds there a moment before the baby lets out a sudden sharp squall and the dog begins to thump its tail, one slow beat at a time.
Read MoreThrough the Mirror
My dad was released from prison eighteen months before I was born, but I never knew him as a free man. As a child I used to marvel watching him eat beetroot straight from the tin, standing over the sink and picking up slices gently with his fingers. He’d drop them into his mouth, head turned up to catch any drips, his caution leaving his clothes spot free but his fingertips stained pink. I wish now a piece had fallen one day, the deep red juice landing and spreading across his T-shirt, so I could have laughed. So he could have seen it didn’t matter to anyone if it left a mark, at least not anyone who mattered to him. . . . . . . “What are you doing here?” “What are you doing here?” I fire back. I am at my grandparents’ door, which my dad has just opened. Neither of us should be here. If my dad is here, it means he is homeless again, drinking again, useless again. He notices Julia behind me and recalibrates. A good-looking man who knows it, appearance first, always. He pulls himself taller. “And you are?” “Julia,” she says. “Well, you both better come in, I guess.” Something is off. It’s not just the slurred voice, which has been constant for a few years now; his hair isn’t dyed, his clothes are wrinkled. He doesn’t have his moustache. He looks old. Worse, he looks ugly, a faux pas in his family, crammed with models and photographers. Years later, my grandma, lying in bed in a nursing home, will pull me close like she is going to whisper me a secret, but instead she says, “I wish your dad had married someone better-looking than your mum.” His ugliness shocks me but also gives me a little feeling of pleasure. Ugly face for ugly behavior, I think. I am seventeen now, almost an adult legally but technically still a ward of the state, and I have run away, girlfriend in tow, and crossed state lines. The police were going to come and grab me, but my mum convinces them she will get us both the next morning instead and drop me back at the group home where I have just been placed. When she tells me this over the phone, because my grandparents have of course called her, she explains it as though it is a huge inconvenience for her and a massive favor to me. At the time it feels like a punishment, but as an adult I recognize the feeling as fear. My dad tries to engage me in conversation, but I am uninterested. It’s been almost two years since we have seen each other, and I let his questions float in the air and not find me. In the morning, I get up and see him and Julia sat at the kitchen counter, where he is drawing balloons in various stages of deflation. He is telling her something about self-esteem and how this fills us. I think to myself that all he is filled with is years of twelve-step messaging and self-help books. “Your dad is so clever,” she says. “Stay away from him,” I snap in response. He stands up and lightly touches my shoulders. “You’re so much like me,” he says. “You need to be careful, or you’re going to get stuck in here.” He lifts one hand from my shoulder and gently taps my forehead with his knuckle. “Like where I’m stuck,” he reiterates, and then leaves the kitchen. When is it socially OK for me to respond to someone who tells me they are sorry my dad is dead with “Look, I just don’t fucking care anymore. It’s been a really long time. But thanks.” Is it after five years? Twenty? Is it now that he has been dead longer than I knew him? Not that I knew him that well in life, but in death he is crystallized, always the same person I replay in memories, never changing, never aging. In ten years I will be older than he ever was. It feels awkward now if I am sad about him. I tell this to a friend who also has a dead dad. “Dead dad club,” I always say, and laugh. She is my friend because she laughs too. “I’m just not going to do it anymore,” I say to her one day. “Do what?” she asks. “Well, grieve. Mourn. I just think I’m past it. It feels weird now. I don’t want to do it anymore.” She tilts her head and looks at me. “I don’t think that is a decision you get to make. It’s not a choice, it’s a process.” “Well, I choose,” I say with a little more edge than I mean. “OK.” She laughs lightly. “Tell your therapist that.” I do tell my therapist that, and while she doesn’t say the same thing my friend did, she sort of says the same thing. “But you won’t always feel the same way,” she says. “Nothing we feel is static.” My dad had strong opinions on women. He absolutely would have called himself a feminist, but I don’t know what his definition of that word would have been. I think he would have said he liked women and he never hit them, and that would have been enough for him. I am eleven the day my stepmother kicks him out of the house, which just so happens to coincide with the one weekend that year he has my sister and me. She enters the lounge screaming at him that he is drunk, and how disgusting is that, in front of his kids. “I know you’re buying drugs too!” she yells. He tells her, loudly, if she doesn’t shut up, he will put her head through the fucking TV. After she leaves I follow him outside to the shed, where he goes to have a smoke and cool down. “You shouldn’t speak to her like that,” I say. “I know,” he says, “but she’s such a bitch.” “But is she right? Are you drunk right now?” “I have had drinks. I am not drunk.” I think about this for a minute. “Are you doing drugs?” I ask, using the verb doing like the kid I am, before I get older and learn to say using. “No,” he says firmly. “Well . . . I mean, I smoke weed sometimes. But that isn’t a drug. Sometimes I buy coke, but I can’t afford that very often. But that’s it.” “Why don’t you stop though? ’Cos I don’t think she likes it. I don’t like it.” He is done smoking now, but we have never had a conversation like this, so he stays in the shed with me, humoring me, or perhaps legitimately trying to explain. I feel old enough, tricked by my emerging puberty, for the conversation I am initiating. “I know you don’t like it, but it’s not that easy,” he says. I push. “But don’t you love me? Don’t you love me enough to stop?” His shoulders sag a little. He looks right into me. “No.” It is not cruel, and he does not look happy to say it. But it is the truth, and one I asked for. He explains further, saying he doesn’t love himself enough to stop, that it doesn’t have anything to do with me, and those words will be what I remember when I am older, but in the moment the no winds me, and I suddenly feel very tired and very young, and I want my mum. He asks me if I have any more questions. “Why do you do it?” I ask. “Jessie,” he says, “I just feel so bored.” . . . . . . My mum will arrive to pick up Julia and me soon, and I am preparing, brushing my hair in front of the mirror in the bathroom. My dad comes and stands awkwardly at the door, holding a dog lead. “I’m going to take Mia out.” “You don’t want to see Mum?” I talk to his reflection, not bothering to turn around. “Nah.” He shuffles a bit. “OK, then. I love you.” I don’t remember what I say. Sometimes my memory tells me I say OK and keep brushing my hair. Sometimes my memory tells me I say I love you too. In neither memory do I turn around. I speak to him only through the mirror. Six weeks later he is dead. I never looked at him to say goodbye. Sometimes it is as though he just disappeared into the mirror, and that is where he is stuck, in his mind, in my memory, and if I could reach through and get him back and ask him what I said, then it would free both of us. I know it doesn’t matter which memory is true. The true part is that the last thing my dad told me was that he loved me. I remind myself this is what he left me with, and for one of the only times in our joint lives, it was something good. I pick up this memory gently with my fingertips, tilt my head back, and drop it lightly into my mouth. It stains my fingertips pink. He leaves a mark.
Read MoreIntroduction
The 2025 Kenyon Review Nonfiction Contest was judged by Lucy Ives, author of An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays (Graywolf Press, 2024) and Life Is Everywhere: A Novel (Graywolf Press, 2022). From the contest’s entries, Ives selected “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato. Ives writes: “Through the Mirror” is a brief and devastating portrait of a father. Entirely unsentimental, the essay is an act of witnessing and brave mourning. It asks us to reflect on a singular human mystery, one that many of us are encountering right now: How do we, the children of parents who have failed to love themselves, begin to live? Ives selected two runners-up for the contest. On "Trying to Explain Genocide to a Six-Year-Old" by Davina Sambath, Ives writes: Many of us remember where we were when we first learned about genocide; how incredible it seemed that human nature and community can be so deformed and suffering so multiplied. "Trying to Explain Genocide to a Six-Year Old" describes this painful moment from the point of view of a parent, who sensitively and brilliantly acknowledges their inability to explain, weaving a narrative of dismay and healing. On "Check Out" by Gavin Ockert, Ives writes: "Check Out" is funny and tragic; it's a feat of storytelling and an unflinching look at how bare life has become in the U.S. I will think of it whenever I go to buy groceries. I will also think of it whenever I try to understand what time is in the present era.
Read MoreUpon reviewing the Edouard and Maurice Sandoz collection in Lausanne
Of course you remember Mariettethe marionette who loved to breakher routineshe was living in Inwood along the longdefunct IRTshe was picking sandalwood foundat a store out in Francecarrying it far pasther deathbed in Ryea flair you seefor drama requiredthe genes obtainedfrom a mother the waya cow might obtain a streamskulking along the plainfinding the oldestfarmer west of the Grandereading the marvelous work of Soamesplease pick me up off a shelfnext to Navalny while attempting to arriveat a general theoryof what people want from the worldI gavea Fabergé eggto a very prettygirl I met at a bus stoptodayI put khan in my name so pleaserecognize my historically feudal claimunless you’re too busy yellingfrom the Bethesda Terrace Arcadethere are redsardines in this candid you see them throughthe vitrine or were you blocked by the catbeing petted by a manwho flew in this morningfrom HyderabadI am atthe fishing village of Galileein Washington County the siteof the Block Island Ferrywhere a man I knew dove to his death at a depth of a hundred and twenty feetwe were there the winter the Sound froze overand like the Bering Strait you could walkfrom one island right onto the other.
Read MoreZillow listings in an oil town
The thing is I understandthe dangers of plotting this farin advance a matryoshkaof crews repairing the secondsinkhole on I-80 New Jerseya bunch of trashI met my wifein Dyrrachium while smokinga cigarette under a gas ventengaged in various other nicheactivities likefor a while taking pictures of peoplewith their heads out of windowsI have manyChicago LA Philly New York of coursemy favorite is Venicealways old mensendingtulips from Amsterdamthe mosaic on a publictoilet it’s socloudy herewashed tiles blending intosome grammarit’s hieroglyphit’sapotheosismy cat headbutting my hand as I write thishe’s perched on the side of the bed beside me staringmidnightagainreally I’d rather be alonein foreign placeslike sand overa sheet of rice or undera drawbridgeI was onthe canal the other daywondering if you were as good to your parents as your parents were to their parentsI gothit by a car the other daywhat’s up tristateI think the Arbob Palacewas closer to Frank Lloyd Wrightan architect with a sartorial lifestyle that was fodder for tabloidsthan it was to the lastEmir of Bukhara beforehe took refuge in Afghanistansetting various oven timers againstone another for his tray of seasonal romance.
Read MoreAbacus; Chortkeh
Tell me about cherried board; from your grandfatherivory; bone in monochromebalanced and turned; by concentrated hands of hisover Brazilian coffee, The first cacao in the city; carpetsSilk, you can feel, your father tells me crouched on knees; knottedcount of the bazaar; etymology stops here, often doeswith your tongue. Inscribed back; home.Ābāq, dust; abax is somethingwithout a base; youhanging abacus; exiled sum; your lands dividedso your language only gets to be a story; addingbone to bone, you place it in our bedroom.
Read MoreDeptford
Nightlife spits and makes me oldin it. That bridge is just stoic, not looked after,my kitchen molding into an hour I choseto ignore. That hill was so cold on the trek home, our backs to everything north of us, the river way ahead, the air between treaclinginto the sound of you building a film setwith your hands, tatty and strongin mime, time flashesat me and you weren’t even a full night; shallowlike a moment with a teaspoon
Read More3 a.m.
The Kenyon Review · "3 a.m." by Radha Marcum For DWM The logic-illogic of this hour : gustsmaking the eaves moan like lambs : likevoice-box toys turned over : bleatingair : like the flock of sheep that atetheir fill of a field grown over uraniumtailings : when they all turned blueranchers piled on tires and petrol : litthem : and so the blue sheep rosein plumes over the prairie : am I countingthem now? : in the warhead factorydown the road lead-gloved hands shapedsleepless isotopes into triggers :Grandfather I’m still counting the alarmsin your directive when the factorycaught fire : “bury it” you said : so theyburied it : the Cold War roaring then :a radioactive plume over the city : over/notover : those structures burn under us still :remnants mix with new developments :I drove by there just yesterday : geeseback on the lake with its warm underbellyof radioactivity : peace in the rowsof homes : wreaths hung on some doors :new snow and Christmas approaching :bells bleeding through the radio
Read MoreHoney Bees of the Exclusion Zone
The Kenyon Review · "Honey Bees of the Exclusion Zone" by Radha Marcum In the shadows of Soviet statues, honey-making bees thrive. — Richard Collett, “Inside Belarus’ Nature Reserve in the Shadow of Chernobyl” In Pripyat, site of injury, high-riseapartments perdure as hives of windand black fungi glut radioactive waters,you read. Drones swarm a queenroused from the hexagonal wax cellsyou imagine tucked under the deskin one photo. It distracts youfrom his next chemical drip — concoctedantibodies bathing his mutant B cells,transmuting “safe” to “eat me, please,”a lifesaving trick in the signals.On the abandoned desk, a child’scosmonaut drifts on — mute, tethered bya thin umbilicus. To where? Imaginationextends toward a source of oxygenas herds of takhi trample pastthe yellow warning signs. Your husbandsleeps through treatments. Whereas B cellsstart out as hematopoietic stem cells,marrow-born, bees’ pliant cells morphselves — pupa to adult. Red Foresthives multiply by queens. The unstableelements split themselves into parts andthese are called daughters. Blink andfigures transpose — the desk could beyours in this exclusion zone wheretourists prop dolls in empty cribsand fungi elders cradle gamma wavesin hyphae that crave radioactive hits.Words of safety? Tethered to wind.Pang pang goes love’s blood. Inthe Red Forest, life transmutes. Wheredoes the poem begin? Sealed inlarval rooms, in cocoons, imaginal cellsrevise form, as morphed bees waggledirections to catkins in irradiated trees.
Read MoreEcstatic Past
I once lived by so many horses,so many goats and unendangered bison.Eagles, bald eagles! Really! Right thereby the river in the dead tree. I lived theretoo, right by the river, by the minor leaguefield. I had the neighbor man sharpenthe blades on the push mower. There wasn’tso much electric. We didn’t plow the streets.I don’t know how else to say it. My lifewas very small and beautiful. I was youngthough I didn’t know it. I was happywhen the lilacs filled the alleyways in June.I got drunk, I got loved so many ways.I carried a knife. The brakes weren’t goodbut good enough. I traded needles, I cut stalks,I planted garlic, I taught school, I put a checkin the mail with a stamp on it. I fell off my bike.I wore a bandana like a bandit for the smoke.When I danced, I spun around. I paid a buckto shake the dice. There were dogs everywhere.There were cattle. Coyotes. Owls. Bats. Sage.I used to live right beneath the stars. Right there,between the hills. There’s no other way to say it.I was so animal, I wrote poems, I was so young.I thought it would always be this way. I can still smell it.I can hear the crickets. And the coal train, how it howled like a song.
Read MoreHad We But World Enough
Swifts plummetthrough strata of skyfor the pleasureof coming out alive.Cicadas rattlethe olive treesas wind skims the sea,electrifying stone.A cloud forms itselfrain atom by atom.I’ve been warnedthe sea turtle bitesbut know I’d risk itto get close.I’m relenting, life:It’s always you who wins,and we keep living.Even the parasailing man,adrift without a planexcept not to slaminto mountains,even he dislodgeshis throne of airand hits the ground at a run.
Read MoreCharm City
Someone’s just failed to blow up the gridas a helicopter clatters, looking for Kathy.America discovered, as the song decreed,though beneath the seal-slick ease of scorn,there is a shame — of what, we’re hardly sure.A violence that seems somehow our fault,just shy of animal and surest proofof something desperate, bored, and true.It’s not exactly war; attrition might come close.Plot pursues us. We choose our calamitieswith care and like to come to right conclusionsabout things. While in secluded gardens,spring grows jessamine, poppy, and wild rose.
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