Free Where the Sea Used to Be by Rick Bass Page B

peace.”
    â€œDo you?” Mel asked.
    â€œI’m not looking for it,” Wallis said. “I’m just looking to drill ahead.”
    â€œLike a machine,” Mel said. “Like Old Dudley teaches you to be.”
    Wallis shook his head. “I think of it as being more like an animal that has to do only one thing—that spends all its waking and dreaming moments thinking of only one thing: the next thing.”
    â€œI only know of one kind of animal like that,” Mel said.
    â€œHe’s not
un
happy,” Wallis said. “Not like he’d be if he wasn’t doing it.”
    â€œI know that,” Mel said. “I’ve known that part for a long time.” She rolled over on her back. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s good to hear it again,” and Wallis was reminded strangely, sadly, of a child who is told an old familiar story again and again: who needs the repetition of it for solace—and no matter whether it is a happy story, or a terrible one—only that it is the familiar story, and therefore the one that makes sense.
    They lay there and listened to the fire die, and when the fire was soon silent, they moved with peace into that half-land between waking and sleeping—both of them beneath the spread of the hides, yet separate. Mel imagined that she was slipping into the fit of her steady stride across the snowy landscape, looking for tracks, while Wallis imagined that, finally, he was descending, as if down a mine shaft—
only one possibility;
and the last conscious thought he had was a new one to him, one that might have come from Mel’s perspective: a thought so strange that for a moment he opened his eyes and felt the urge to right himself, to catch his balance.
    His thought was, How fast a single day goes by, but how much you can fill it with, which in turn seems to slow it down so—but then he was gone, unconscious, and listening with his body but not his mind to the old echoes and stories and days of the elk above him; and farther above, to the sound, the pressure, of the snow landing on the roof and pressing down, sealing them into a place for a little while, even as in their dreams they strived to keep traveling.
    Their breath rose in twin trails, slow rivers of warmth from their sleeping lungs, while the rest of their world, canted now away from the sun, cooled and sank, as time—their time—fell away and below, like a thing shed.
    Â 
    I N THE MORNING, AT GRAY LIGHT—NINE O’CLOCK, AND snowing harder than ever—Wallis woke to find that she was gone. When he went out onto the porch, her tracks were already buried; he had no clue of which direction she might have traveled, or when she would be back.
    He went back inside, built the fire up, and scavenged for food, of which there was not much: a small bag of oats, some dried mushrooms, and tea bags; some stale bread and purple jam. The salmon. A bag of potatoes. He felt a wave of shame at not having considered the weight of his existence in her life—the simple weight of his appetite—much less her own need for space, solitude. He understood that it was Matthew’s cabin, or had been, but certainly it seemed to be hers now. Matthew and Old Dudley only got out here two or three times a year now, though sometimes Matthew came alone, on an occasional impulsive vacation, when Matthew might decide to head north for a weekend.
    Matthew still talked about Mel occasionally, in the office—still called her his girl—but the word when he spoke it had a strange dissonance to it, as if she were in some lightless prison four continents away and might never be seen again.
    Wallis had a piece of toast with jam and a cup of tea and a plate of cold salmon, then went into the spare bedroom to see if he could find the maps that Matthew had said would be there. After an hour of rooting, he found them folded in plain brown envelopes, unlabeled as to even which