Object of Desire
During a picnic at Chickamauga Battlefield, I thought about how serene the place seemed with sunlight flooding onto the grass, the smattering of yellow flowers infusing the textured fields with pinpricks of vividness. Then I thought about how terrifying it would have been to end up alone in any one of the fields at night with the ghosts of so many soldiers lurking about. Couldn't the tortured spirits once trapped in bodies prostrate on the bucolic expanses, suffering as their blood seeped into the soil beneath our blanket, still be floating about in pain? I wondered. The statues dotting the meandering meadows were emblazoned with names too plentiful to absorb, especially while the birds sang so beautifully. How would they have reacted if cannons had been blasting into this lovely afternoon light? I wondered.
The clouds passing lazily by would have witnessed death during those war-torn occasions when men went after men for the rights they upheld as dear. Did the wounded pray for darkness to overtake them so they could die in peace or were they bargaining with God in the off chance they would be plucked from the grass, even while it meant escaping impending death might mean facing uncertain futures?
I only intellectualize what might have happened, not going so far as to feel into their sadness as I lounged on the blanket with the wind strumming through the trees. I knew this was lazy writing behavior but I contented myself with watching the breeze set a rhythm for the clover, which seemed agitated in its vibrations. So much better to lie in peace than die in fight, I thought, even while I realized the importance of freedom for an entire race of people had been won during those battles. Tennessee had made a name for itself in that war—the volunteer state—and I did believe it was right to feel grateful to those who had died there, giving their all with as much meaning as they could muster, whether they truly wanted to be involved or not.
I had packed Richard Ford's book Rock Springs with our picnic food and I kicked back after we'd eaten to see if I could interpret why he was being celebrated as one of America's greatest minimalist novelists. I was caught completely off guard that I had such a tough time with the material. For someone who could speak so positively about the writing experience, his characters were so downtrodden I had to pause after making my way about halfway through the fourth story. "Good god," I jotted in my writer's notebook, "all of this is just too down and out; please not yet another depressing scene!"
The opening of the story "Sweethearts" was an example. Arlene, the protagonist, was saying good-bye to her ex-husband Bobby. The narrator, Arlene's current partner Russ, unveiled the scene: "This was not going to be a good day in Bobby's life, that was clear, because he was headed to jail. He had written several bad checks, and before he could be sentenced for that he had robbed a convenience store with a pistol—completely gone off his mind. And everything had gone to hell, as you might expect. Arlene had put up the money for his bail, and there was some expensive talk about an appeal. But there wasn't any use to that. He was guilty…"
My immaturity as a person hampered me from putting the gloominess aside in order to see that his stories ask good questions, which he allows to unfold naturally. It occurred to me that I was trying to answer the questions I was posing in "Legacy," the short story I'd been writing, much too neatly. A sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach as I realized this was one more issue to add to the long list of challenges I was facing as a fledgling writer, a complication I could ill afford as I already felt my creativity was being sapped by some unseen force. Memories washed in and out of my mind like the tide at Point Lobos but nothing would stick because there was so little time to record anything.
I had let Jim talk me into a day-hike to Clingman's Dome and it was the perfect weather for it. I noticed as we drove into the Appalachians, passing the tattered houses along the roadsides, that the elderly backcountry folks I saw had the kindest faces in repose. There seemed to be a tremendous patience in them that was unique to these marginalized people. I wondered how Ford would have characterized them and I thought about making notes about them but I didn't want to miss any of the scenery whizzing past my field of vision. The dogwoods were still blooming at the higher altitudes in the mountains. They filled the gaps with whispers of white, becoming gauzy plumes enveloped as they were in elemental hues of green and brown.
The tin roofs on the oldest houses slanted far beyond the interiors in order to cover the wrap-around verandas, making the homes appear as if someone had socked dirty floppy hats on their heads. As far as the eye could see in this part of the country, the rounded knobs of mountains protruded into the sky. Power lines—the intermittent reminders of "civilization"—cut gashes in some of the peaks, and where the mines met the road, the hearts of most of the hills were scooped out in the interest of culling their copper. I'd never seen dirt as red as the soil left at the scene of the massacre, which had left the entire region broken and barren. The bloody-hued hills spilled into the creeks like veins spouting sludge-like liquid, making quagmires of the soil-clogged rivers. The world seemed incredibly dead and I felt as if I were intruding on nature's suffering, that all she wanted was to be left alone so she could grieve the scars she had yet to have the strength to heal.
I was listening to a Windham Hill compilation and the lyrical music stirred my feelings, making me want to touch the land somehow but I realized that given the immenseness of it, I was as lost as a desperate lover unable to reach the object of his desire. It was then that I noticed an enormous black crow standing at the hem of the asphalt, head bowed, contemplating the sparse grass beneath his feet. I wondered if the bird, who looked so wizened given his monochromatic severity, was a reincarnated monk who had come to listen to nature's dirge. He was so intent I was able to fool myself into believing he wasn't simply readying himself to drag a worm from the soil but was bearing witness to the earth's pain.
My mood stayed somber as we drove along, even as the midday sun washed the rocks along the undulant Hiwassee River in quicksilver hues. They were so brilliant they set the thrashing waters of the river ablaze. The churning rapids, the plundered landscapes and the mirrored surface of the rocks sparked a question in me, even so early in what has become an environmentally conscious game to so many people who give lip-service to the cause without putting any weight behind it: "There is so much written about man against nature; what of the struggle nature faces against man?"
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