Read Online Where the Sea Used to Be by Rick Bass - Free Book Online Page B

saw him do it a couple times,” Artie said. “He’d go ass-busting out there, all lit-up, and splash down right in the middle of all those swans. The swans wouldn’t make a sound—they don’t utter a peep until the day they die. I guess that’s why he was fucking with them, trying to see if he could get them to croak, or peep, or make
some
damn sound—and sometimes he’d even grab one by the wing, or brush against it as he went into the river, and that swan would get a little gasoline on it, and for a few moments, while it was rising into the air and then flying, part of the swan would be on fire. I tell you what,” Artie said, “it was a thing to see. Matthew would bob up to the surface and float there, and just laugh. It was always just a film of gas that would get on the swans—the flame would burn out before it did any damage to the feathers, or to the bird itself—but it was a sight to see. You could be working in town and look up and see seven or eight swans flying past, over the tops of the trees, with one of them on fire, and you’d know he was down there fucking with those birds.”
    â€œHe was such a sweet boy,” Helen said. “Such a fun boy. I was always having to run behind him to be sure he didn’t hurt himself. I was an old woman, even then.” She touched her weathered face and laughed. “My God, he aged me. He wore me out,” she said. “In the summer, you could see burnt bushes all up and down the river from where he’d hidden, lit himself, and then gone running through the brush. He tried to get farther from the river each time. It looked like otter-slides, up and down the river. Sometimes I’d get to the river and find some bushes still burning, and the swans would be gone, and I wouldn’t see any Matthew, wouldn’t know where he was. I’d call and call for him, and he wouldn’t come in til late that night, or sometimes even the next day; said he’d gone
exploring,
had gone up into the mountains.”
    Helen pressed her hand to her heart, which Wallis imagined to be about the size of a pea or a raisin, now.
    Stories of his endurance. “That dang wall,” Artie said.
    Helen smiled, and explained to Wallis, “He started building it when he was seven. Just started hauling rocks in from the mountains and stacking them. Then when he began driving his jeep, he hauled them in that.”
    Wallis had seen those pictures, also yellowed and ancient, in the hallway that led to the bar’s restrooms. In those photos, not just Matthew, but all manners of men, women, and children had been carrying and stacking the big square rocks. “I thought they were miners,” Wallis said, “or workers in some quarry somewhere.”
    Helen shook her head. “Matthew started it, but by the time he was sixteen, the thing was twenty miles long, and so beautiful that the rest of us started helping him with it—working on it whenever we pleased, like a hobby.” Helen reached in her coat for a pack of cigarettes, tried to light one. Wallis watched the hypnotic snap of her lighter, which finally took flame. Helen’s hand shook afterward, just from that simple exertion.
    â€œI was out back, bringing wood from the shed to the porch,” she said, motioning to her snowshoes.
    Mel said, “Oh shit, Helen, I’m sorry, I forgot,” and Helen shrugged, clearly pleased with her martyrdom. “We’ll haul some in for you tonight,” Mel said. She told Wallis, “I always help Helen bring her wood in. Matthew used to do it before he went away, but now I do it every autumn. It’s already cut and in the woodshed, curing. I just need to bring it to the back porch.”
    It was strange, Wallis thought, the way they kept talking about Matthew: as if believing he were going to come back someday.
    â€œWhy did he build the wall?” Wallis asked, and Helen shrugged, drew