One Day the Wind Changed (17 page)

Smiling at the memory, Robert crossed his arms behind his head. He stared at the stars. A silver satellite drifted across the Big Dipper's bowl. Another movement: a bit of space junk, a second satellite, a silent jet?

No. The object, a single mass made of many parts, dropped several feet and danced above the ground. The hair stood stiff on Robert's arms. He swore it was … it seemed to be.

The image broke apart. Flashing slivers wriggled in the air, illuminated by a cheddar-yellow moon.

Robert sat up. “All right,” he said aloud. “I'm dreaming. This is a dream and I know it's a dream. I'm going to lie down and dream of something else. My father and me on the lawn, running, playing catch. Katia leaping behind us. Mother watching from the kitchen.”

He lay back and closed his eyes. “Dream,” he whispered. What he thought he had seen was a school of blue and yellow fish, darting out at him from the constellation Lyra.

He had lost track of the days of the week. He only understood it was Sunday when he heard hymns from a church down the road as he stood filling his tank with gas. After he paid the service station attendant, a high school kid wearing a “Ski El Paso” T-shirt, Robert drove half a block and parked the car in a small dirt lot.

He walked to the church and stood on the concrete porch, peering into the open doorway. In a cool, shaded vestibule, a middle-aged woman slouched against a wall, smoking. In her left hand, she held a gold aluminum ashtray, stuffed with butts. The woman nodded at Robert and went on puffing. It was hard for him not to stare at the ashtray, at the smeared lipstick on the tips of the crushed cigarettes. He turned his head to see inside the chapel, but it was dark, with just a few candles, and so long as he stood in the sunlight his eyes would not adjust to the shade.

“We will come to understanding by and by,” someone said—presumably the preacher. Robert remembered hearing the phrase years ago. His father had not been a churchgoer—“Too much the scientist,” he'd say whenever Robert asked him why he never talked of God-but he had taken Robert to Mass a few times when Robert was little, thinking, perhaps, that in the absence of his mother the boy needed solace that a working father couldn't offer. Robert recalled sitting in the sanctuary puzzling over the phrase “by and by.” Did it mean
next to, because of
or
all in good time?

Next to the beehive, through repeated, stinging pain, I learned of loss, Robert thought.

Because of my parents' illnesses, I learned of loss.

All in good time, from traveling and leaving things behind, I've learned about loss.

The smoking woman smiled at him again. He had been staring at her without realizing it. He glanced at his hands, at the lines in his palms. What are you hoping to find? he thought. He rubbed his hands as if to smooth a map.

The flare of a match. A sulfurous smell. The woman kissed another cigarette.

The dreams came almost every night now. Gills, whirring blue fins, yellow tails, inches from the ground.

Robert told himself to wake up. None of this was real. He sat stiffly in his sleeping bag, wheezing, hugging his backpack to his chest. He rubbed his eyes and shined his flashlight into the dust until the last of the fish disappeared.

“So far, three couples have looked at the house,” the real estate agent told him on the phone. “I think one of them may make an offer.” Her voice rang high, like a child's, but he remembered how much she looked like his mother. As he slouched in the phone booth, watching teenagers in muddy cars circle a burger joint across the highway, he imagined holding a conversation he never could have had. In his mind, his mother sat in the dining room, beneath the chandelier, wearing a light cotton dress.

“So the house is good?” he said.

“Terrific,” said his mother. Confident. Healthy.

“And the lawn?”

“Glorious. I'll be sure to water it again this evening.”

“I'm glad.”

“Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.”

None of this is real.

“I'll let you know if an offer comes through, okay?”

“Okay,” Robert said.

Across the road, cars went round and round.

As days passed, he feared his mother's spirit had taken possession of the Pontiac, and of him, blowing him aimlessly down paths narrow and obscure. You'll never return, he thought. What's left for you to reclaim?

Abandoned studies of the past.

A house no longer yours.

He hacked. Wheezed. A splendid surrender.

While searching for a place to sit and eat a sandwich, Robert came upon the bones of a bird, tiny as grass clippings, tangled in thorny brush. The bones reminded him of a discovery he had made when he was twelve, out looking for his cat. Katia had been missing for hours, and Robert's father feared an owl might have snatched her. Lately, some of the neighbors had spotted a Great Horned—“unusual but not entirely rare in this part of the world,” Robert's father had said.

Sure enough, in the alley behind the house, Robert found bone and hair in a ball: an owl's regurgitations. Robert placed the remains in a pickle jar, like the one in which his father kept his “rainy day” coins. He carried the jar to his room. His father had returned to his office after dinner, to work with his maps. Robert set the jar on a windowsill and crouched before it as the moon rose. Yellow light trailed across the contours of the glass, across the hardened ball: his ex-cat. Robert stared, as if this moment, this image, might reveal to him life's liquid motion, the changes, the futures embodied in us all-futures we never saw unless we paused and really looked.

Now, he gazed at the bird's remains. Maybe Katia and this poor flying creature were lucky to leave the world before their bodies betrayed them.

His chest ached. Years ago, a doctor had told him he was using only 10 percent of his lung capacity. “I have half a mind to hospitalize you,” the doctor had said.

Robert felt now as he had felt back then, and he knew he'd become dependent on the inhaler. Its effectiveness was eroding. Perhaps he should buy a new one, or maybe even see a doctor in the next town.

On the outskirts of Marfa, Robert sat at a red light. Up and down the street, air-conditioners clattered in windows, allowing people to live in this place where otherwise they would perish.

He saw a sign for an allergy and asthma specialist. The office was closed. He would return in the morning. The inhaler did nothing for him now. Too much dust. Too much smoke and wind.

He passed a small crowd off the road. They had gathered to see the Marfa Lights, erratic and mysterious flashes in the sky. In a brochure he'd read that the lights had become a tourist draw: some folks believed they were evidence of alien spacecraft; others called them spirits of the dead. Sober-minded observers insisted they were car lights reflected by dust-grains, or traces of glowing swamp gas.

Robert kept going. He turned onto a deserted farm road. Finally, he stopped and spread his sleeping bag in an open field surrounded by mesquite. His wheezing silenced the crickets. He pulled his flashlight and
Commerce of the Prairies
out of his backpack. He tried to read, but the words floated off the page. All right. He was exhausted. Dizzy from lack of oxygen. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. He'd go to the specialist in the morning.

He dozed, and woke to find his flashlight losing juice. He shook it. Inside, the batteries rattled like fingernails tapping a pane of glass.

He slept again and dreamed of the fish.

When he woke, he was encased inside the lnhalatorium.

Water filled the desert.

“This is ridiculous. I'm dreaming,” he said aloud. His voice echoed in the jar. He said no more, for fear of burning up oxygen.

Tap. Tap tap
. He turned to see his mother swaying in the water in a splendid green dress. Young and strong. Behind her, a glass chandelier rose in midair, as majestic as a jellyfish. He kissed his mother's fingers through the glass. Katia bobbed past, trailed by exotic plankton. Then Robert's father tumbled into view, weightless and thin. He waved something-a map: the word “Paradise” stamped across its top.

Robert mouthed the words, “I did it.” He meant to say,
I've done as you said, Father. I saw where I came from
. His father tried to straighten the map. The night's currents slowed his hands but he wouldn't give up. Watching him, Robert understood, with a swell of excitement and fear, where he'd been headed all along.
Ocean and desert. Sea and sky
. Soon, he was going to run out of air.

Observations of Bumblebee Activity during the Solar Eclipse June 30, 1954

being a rough and unexpurgated draft of my report to the Academy, containing a note of explanation to you … don't worry, Hans, I'll edit before submitting-A. L
.

O
ur goal was to see if bumblebees seek blossoms in unexpected darkness. The observations took place at the Biological Station near Bergen (sixty degrees north, five degrees east), well within the path of the total eclipse. The observers were Hans Lyme (Observer A) from the University of Bergen, and me, Amy Locke (Observer B), a postdoctoral student from Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the southwestern United States.

From early morning the day was gray and dull, and severely restricted insect activity. Afterward, I realized that the conditions, with nearly constant temperature and humidity, leaving light intensity as the only variable of consequence, formed a favorable out door laboratory-more so than if the sky had been clear.

Rubus idaeus L
was the plant identified for inspection. Two areas of wild-growing bushes, still in fairly good bloom, were selected (after much back-and-forth between Observers A and B about the optimal atmosphere for gathering data and for pursuing amorous prankishness, Observer A being notoriously distracted in the field). Eventually, sites were chosen from the point of view of best bumblebee activity; five meters apart, the bushes were situated on a rather steep hillock, exposed to the south and a steady southerly wind.

The observers synchronized their watches (this took longer than expected, as, during the process, Observer A became increasingly enamored of Observer B's left wrist). Observations were made by turning our heads right to left, counting every
Bombus
in range (Observer B ignoring the frequent—and hilariously charming—“Yoo-hoos” rising from Observer A's reedy perch). Temperature and humidity were measured by means of a Lambrecht's psychrometer Number 740. Light intensity was measured by means of a sixtomat from the top of a hill (altitude approximately twenty meters). According to Observer A, elevated heart rate caused by glimpses, through the bushes, of Observer B's exposed and milky ankles, was beyond calculation.

All pertinent findings may be regarded as accurate enough for the purposes of this report.

Though bumblebee activity was minimal all day, it declined as the eclipse progressed, and individual bees-apart from one specimen in Observer B's immediate vicinity-had disappeared by totality. The remaining specimen was heard for another minute but of course could not be seen owing to darkness.

(… and then you were upon me, stinging my mouth with kisses, my thighs bared to the brisk southerly winds.

Hans, forgive me for not responding, but with the sudden death of my brother last month [though it had been apparent for some time that he had fallen from the nest, away from his healthy fellows], and the rakish reputation preceding you, I had decided, just that morning, to forgo my studies and my professional ambitions, and return to my home desert. The gloom I felt in the field that day surpassed the shade all around us. In the desert, little grows so nothing is hidden. It can be strangely refreshing. Mentally clarifying. A phenomenon worthy of research.)

Shortly after totality, the temperature declined. This drop may be explained by increasing wind, followed by a series of light afternoon showers. There is reason to believe that neither the slight variation of the humidity nor the very short periods of drizzle had an influence on bumblebee activity.

It ought to be mentioned that under normal conditions bee behavior in this climate is usually constant throughout the day.

The only remaining problem left for this discussion (besides the eternal puzzles of disease and life cut short, of inappropriate laughter and love budding at the least likely moments) is the fact that, while a few bees continued to work the blossoms in the darkness, nearly nine minutes elapsed before the full contingent returned to the field following the eclipse. This confirms previous sightings indicating that bees need a certain level of illumination before starting their dances. Temperature is usually believed to be the limiting factor that delays fieldwork in the morning in spite of sufficient light intensity. Our eclipse observations-made while the temperature was nearly constant-suggest that other factors may be at work.

(A kiss on my naked back between the shoulder blades, to ease the pain of a sudden bite; my tears, which I could not explain to you at the time. So many factors beyond the fine calibrations of our instruments.)

The wind speed rose immediately after the total eclipse, but only to a rate that normally has no influence on group behavior. Naturally, deteriorating conditions make more challenging any attempt, on our part, to understand individuals.

Concluding remarks: