Thirteen Ways to Water Read online

  “Technically, yes. Like tenants in the same building.”

  “What I’m saying,” Helen’s mother said, “is that it’s not natural for you not to grieve even a little.”

  From the bathroom came Skyreeee? Skyreeee?, followed by a low, vibrating Oooooooooooomp.

  “Richard, cut it out!”

  “I’m just washing my hands.”

  “Mother, I’ve got to go,” Helen said, and hung up. Then, marching down the hall, she said, “Young man, when I’m on the phone I expect a little—”

  “It wasn’t me!” Richard said as she entered the bathroom. “The pipes make noise when the water runs.” He turned the faucet, and as the water ran, the bathroom filled with Skyreeee? Skyreeee? and then Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. “See?”

  “O.K.,” Helen said. “Not guilty. Where’s your sister?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, find her and get her to set the table, and you pour drinks. I want water.”

  “Can I have Coke?”

  “No, you cannot have Coke. You and Carissa can drink milk like you always do with dinner, and I wish you would stop asking. Now, go get your sister.”

  Richard’s shoulders slumped as though some of his bones had suddenly vanished, and he sighed, “O.K.”

  “Don’t you drag your feet,” Helen said. “Scoot.”

  When Richard filled his mother’s glass at the kitchen sink, the pipes said Aaaawooooot, and then echoed Ootootoot.

  “God, that’s irritating,” Helen said as she pulled the casserole from the oven.

  “The toilet does it, too,” said Carissa. “And the bathroom sink.” She drummed on the table with two spoons.

  “Do you want to go to your room?” Helen asked.

  “No,” Carissa said, still drumming.

  “Then cool it and finish setting the table.”

  Helen had always been amazed at how long the kids could dawdle over loading the dishwasher. Tonight, after trying unsuccessfully to read the newspaper in the living room while they fought and carried one glass or one fork at a time from the table, she sent them to bed early and finished the job herself. When she turned the appliance on, it sang a rising and falling Aaaa-ank. Aaaaaa-ank. Aaaaaaaaaa-aaaaank.

  “All right,” she said. “That’s enough!”

  In the garage she opened David’s toolbox, and as she touched the cool metal of the tools, she felt a tremor move from her hand and into her arm. She closed her eyes and said deliberately, “I will need a locking pliers and a pipe wrench and maybe a screwdriver,” though she actually had little idea what she might need or what she might do with it.

  Inside the house again, she heard Carissa calling her.

  “What is it?” Helen said from the hall.

  Long silence.

  “What!”

  “I want a drink of water.”

  “You’re a big girl. You get a drink yourself, and then you get right back in bed. No dillydallying.” She turned and walked toward the stairwell.

  “Mom?”

  “What now?”

  Another long silence.

  “Carissa, what?”

  Again, silence, and Helen turned toward the basement stairs.

  As she started down, she felt strange, as though her limbs grew a little heavier with each step. The air felt thickened. Down. Down. Each step took longer than the one before it. Down. She became aware of the effort required to fill her lungs. There was a distant roaring sound, like the surf heard from afar. Each breath slow. Each step deliberate. From the bottom of the stairs, the light bulb at the top of the stairwell looked far away and shimmery. The basement air was damp. Helen put her forearm against the cold wall and took a long, slow breath. Just breathing in and breathing out was hard work.

  Far away, she heard Carissa call, “Mom?” but she turned toward the rec room, heading toward the utility room beyond. Slow steps. Now, though, she no longer felt heavy. Instead, it was as though she were no heavier than the air, and she had to move slowly because with each step she had to concentrate on keeping her feet on the floor. She switched on the blue light over the pool table, and it seemed dimmer and bluer than she remembered it. Her hand felt the switch on the utility room wall, but no light came when she made it click several times with a hollow sound. She swam into the room with the murky blue light behind her.

  The room stretched out farther in front of her than reason told her it could. She couldn’t see the walls. Two black immensities floated like zeppelins in the space in front of her, one a little larger than the other. Far away, as though through many walls of glass, she heard Carissa’s feet on the floor above her. Whales, she saw in the dim light. They were whales. And when Carissa turned the faucet upstairs and the water began to flow in the pipes, the whales slowly turned their bodies toward the familiar sound, and the larger one cried, Skyreeee? Aaaaaaa-ank.

  The smaller one answered, Aaaaaa-ank. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. Then the water in the pipes stopped.

  Helen looked at the tools in her hands. The metal was warm. She thought of David’s hands on them, and then of her own hands in David’s. Large hands, she remembered. When had he last held her hands in his, sheltering them, nesting them? So very long ago. How far she and David had drifted. Distantly, she heard Carissa returning to bed. Helen turned and started slowly away. She switched off the blue light. Slow, difficult steps. At the bottom of the stairs, she felt for a moment that she would float away on a black current, back into the darkness. But then she mounted the first step and felt a little better with each subsequent progression toward the yellow light and the air.

  She woke before dawn, and started the coffee brewing. In her bathroom she saw David’s tools lying on the counter. She picked up the screwdriver, and it felt hard and cold in her hand. She made herself laugh a short, uncertain laugh. Whales.

  She stepped into the shower, and as the water began to fall, she heard Skyreeee? Skyreeee? and an answering Awoooooot. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk.This time she couldn’t make herself laugh. Instead she heard a sound come from inside her like air escaping, reluctantly, from a balloon. Eeeeeee. Short breath. Eeeeeeee. And then she managed a sob, and she began to add her own song to the song of the whales. She sang for the seas, for the ancient seas that surrounded us once, that carried our voices across such distances that no matter how far we drifted, we were never alone.

  Introduction to “How Golf Shaped Scotland”

  I am a terrible golfer. It’s hard to say whether I spend more on greens fees or lost balls. As bad as I am, though, I enjoy what amounts to a long walk over sculpted terrain. In fact, when I shank another ball out of bounds or into the water, it’s comforting to just stand for a while admiring the landscape, as if I weren’t playing some stupid game at all.

  How Golf Shaped Scotland

  Some say that the town of St. Andrews in Scotland is the cradle of golf. That much is true. Some also say that the rolling land thereabouts was made for golf, and that is surely wrong. Those sandy hillocks, the links of St. Andrews, were not made for golf, but rather by golf.

  Long ago, when the fairy folk of Scotland were seen more often, a priest called Father lain lived in a village not far from where St. Andrews is today. Father lain was the son and grandson of great swordsmen. He had a warrior’s strong arm, and his eyes were as sharp as the finest archer’s. But he never wielded sword nor bow, and the only club he ever held was a slender rod of hazelwood attached to a thick applewood head. A golf club.

  More precisely, the only club Father Iain ever held was a putter, for at that time, a putter was the only sort of golf club there was and the ball was a round white stone. The very shape of Scotland was different, too. In those days, the margin along the coast was flat. Sheep cropped the grass so close that the land was like green felt laid upon a table top. Few men played golf in those days, first because there were always wars to tight against the English, and second because the game was so boring. One hole was the same as the last, and one course of the flat ground
was akin to any other.

  But even a boring game was at least something. After all, a man like Father Iain—a man with a warrior’s strong arm and eyes as sharp as the finest archer’s—cannot be ever and always indoors, even if he is a man of peace. Father Iain played often, putting the white stone from this hole to that, and he played well. He often wished for something more, however. A man of his abilities wants a challenge, and golf gave him but a little of that.

  None of the villagers who bothered to try could beat Father Iain. Theirs was a small village and poor. They had little to be proud of. Is it any wonder then, that the villagers bragged about their golfing priest? “Aye, Father Iain’s the best,” they boasted to any who would listen. “There is no finer player on this earth nor in it.”

  That was bragging indeed, for while mortal man lives on the earth, the wee folk live in it. The boulders are their homes. The great halls of their clans and kingdoms lie beneath the ground.

  Father Iain knew that he was good with his putter, but he also knew not to tempt the powers of the Earth. “Be careful what ye say,” the priest cautioned his flock. “Do not seem to challenge the wee folk on my behalf.”

  Well, it was as true then as it is now that when a priest says not to do something there are those who cannot resist doing it for that reason alone. The villagers began to say to one another, “To be sure, our Father Iain could even beat the fair folk at this game!”

  Never let it be said that the fairies do not like a challenge. One moonlit night, when all the village slept, someone rapped insistently on Father Iain’s door. When the priest opened wide the door, who did he behold but a wee little man and a wee little woman, both of them dressed in finery and each holding a gnarled stick and a white stone.

  “It’s a cauld night the night,” Father Iain observed and added politely, “Will ye come in by the fire, strangers?”

  “Thank ye, no. We are the King and Queen of Faery,” said the King. “We’ve come to take up your challenge.”

  “Challenge? I made no challenge!”

  “Play us, mortal man,” said the Queen, “and if ye win, ye shall indeed be the champion golfer of Scotland.”

  “That is of no import to me,” said Father Iain.

  “And we shall lift the curse,” said the King.

  “The curse?” said Father Iain. “What curse?”

  “Why, the curse we have just now laid,” said the Queen. “That every cow in the village should go dry and every hen cease laying, that every sheep grow sickly and every bit of man-tilled ground go barren.”

  “Ye must play and beat us both for us to lift the spell,” said the King, and he named a time and place three nights hence for the contest.

  In the morning, Father Iain slept later than he meant to, and when he awoke, he had to hurry to prepare for the mass. As he bustled about, he thought that the King and Queen’s visit must have been a dream.

  When he got to the kirkyard, though, he found his parishioners waiting for him and looking worried.

  “Good Father,” said one of the women, “my little bairns are lowing for a sup o’ milk, but their mothers have none to give!”

  “My hens have not laid today,” said a man.

  “D’ye ken sich a prayer as will lift a curse?” asked another, “for sure it is that cursed we are.”

  “Let us celebrate the mass and see what prayers can be said,” Father Iain told them. But though the villagers followed him in for the mass that morning, and though they gathered (he next morning and the next in the pews of the kirk, their prayers did not deliver them. For three days, the cows gave no milk, the hens did not lay, all the sheep trembled with some sickness. Even the turnip leaves began turning brown. Only then did Father lain tell his parish of the curse that the fair folk had laid.

  “To be sure,” said he, “these are the wages of boasting, and God will not deliver us from a curse we have earned.” He might have said, a curse that ye have earned, but he was a kinder and holier man than that.

  Father Iain had no choice but to take up his putter on the appointed night and walk out upon the sward to meet the little King and Queen by moonlight.

  Now anyone who has heard aught of the wee folk knows that they love to win by trickery. Father Iain did not expect fair play, and sure enough, when they all approached the first hole, the priest found that a little hillock stood between his ball and the hole. In a place so flat as Scotland was in those days, such a feature was rare.

  “Strange,” said Father Iain. “I do not recall any mound of earth here, and I have played these same holes often.”

  “There’s many a strange thing in the world,” said the Queen of Faery with a smile. She and the King putted out. Father Iain putted over the hillock as best he could, but he fell a stroke behind.

  When they all approached the second hole, they saw that this time a little hillock stood between the Queen’s ball and the hole.

  “How very odd,” the Queen said, looking at her husband. “I know this ground like I know my own mind, and yet I find a mound here where I’m sure none was before.”

  “There’s many an odd thing in the world,” the King of Faery said with a smile.

  The Queen gave him a glare that would have set a stick on fire, but the King took no notice. Father Iain and the King of Faery putted out in one stroke, but the Queen lost a stroke getting over the hillock.

  Father Iain knew now that he had a chance. “It may be that I cannot win and lift the curse,” he said aloud, “for though the Queen is no better than I, the King is a stroke ahead. Clearly he is the better golfer.”

  But at the third hole, the King’s ball rolled into a patch of sand that he swore had not existed before he hit his ball, and then all three were tied.

  The rest of the game, for nine holes out and nine holes back, continued in this way. The King and Queen used their powers against each other as much as against Father Iain. They look turns pulling a stroke ahead, and then falling a stroke behind. As the three players putted close to the final hole—which was the hole they had started with—all were tied again.

  When the King took his turn, the ground rippled and turned his ball aside. He glared at the Queen.

  Then it was her turn. She hit her ball right toward the hole, but again the ground shook and shifted, forming a little gutter that drew her ball away. She glared at the King.

  Now it was the priest’s turn. His ball was only as far from the hole as a man is tall.

  The Queen of Faery said to the King, “However this game falls out between us, we mustn’t let this mortal man win!”

  And the King said, “Agreed.”

  What hope could the priest have now of lifting the curse? The King and Queen of the very Earth were united against him. The ground he must putt across would ripple and roll, dip and rise, and carry his ball astray.

  But Father Iain had a warrior’s strong arm and eyes as sharp as the finest archer’s. He had a warrior’s wit, as well, and saw the path his ball must take. By the light of the moon, he found a sharp stone, and he split the head of his putter at an angle so that the bottom was thicker than the top, like a wedge.

  “Hit the ball,” said the King, “or we will be at this all night!”

  “As ye wish,” said Father Iain. And though the powers of Faery were united against Father Iain, though the earth bubbled and wiggled like a pot of boiling porridge, he hit the ball with his damaged putter, which was a putter no longer, but the very first niblick ever made. And no Earthly powers could do aught to alter its course, for the ball went not along the ground, but through the air, and did not meet the earth until it struck the bottom of the hole.

  “This would not have happened if ye’d played better!” said the King of Faery to his Queen.

  “It would not have happened if ye had played better!” she answered.

  “And what of the curse?” said Father Iain. “Is it lifted?”

  If the King and Queen heard him at all, they gave no sign. Glowering at one another
, they turned their backs on Father Iain and began to play again. As they played through the night, they made the earth hump and drop all the more. Dunes great and small rose up. Brooks and burns flowed where none had flowed before, and pools and mires appeared.

  In the morning, the villagers were astonished to see how the shape of the land had changed. Over the weeks and months that followed, the land everywhere along the sea changed from flat to rolling. Where before the ground had been level, now there were dunes and hillocks everywhere.

  As for Father Iain, he was much relieved to find that the village cows again gave milk, the hens once more laid, the flocks regained their health, and the meager gardens yielded as much as they ever had.

  What’s more, he found the game of golf was much improved by the altered landscape and by the addition of a few new clubs that lifted the ball into the air.

  It would be many years yet before golf was played with a leather ball stuffed with feathers, but it was now a game that could truly hold a man’s attention, even a man with a warrior’s strong arm and eyes as sharp as the finest archer’s. No one could ever match Father Iain, though he played the game till the very end of his days.

  Introduction to “In the Chief’s Name”

  Eugene, Oregon, where I live, is famous for its anarchists. At the World Trade summit in Seattle, much of the vandalism may have been the work of Eugene’s band of black-clad saboteurs. Eugene anarchists were convicted of torching several SUVs on a local car dealer’s lot. On a smaller scale, Eugene anarchists employed a vandalism campaign to drive one of my favorite restaurants out of business for fear that a popular, trendy success in their low-rent neighborhood would result in the gentrification of the district. Sooner or later, I had to write about these people.

  The story is also about Chief Seattle, who never made the beautiful speech that is attributed to him, the speech about the decline of his way of life and the rise of the white man. Indeed, there are multiple texts for a speech that Seattle supposedly made, but each one of them was written by white men who were inventing their own versions of what they wanted the chief to be and say, for their own political purposes. I’ve done the same thing again, putting words in his mouth. At least I’m telling you up front that this is fiction.