The Lava in My Bones (3 page)

Sam stepped back and replied with forced sternness. “Sir.” Franz flinched at the coldness of the word, but Sam repeated,
“Sir—what did you hope to gain from this conference?”

The man was breathing heavily. “It's funny, but when I see you, I don't really see you. I just sense something coming from inside you. And I put on these clothes—this shirt is 100 percent silk, and my jeans are the latest Diesel—as a …” he searched for the word
“Bollwerk
—bulwark?—against everything here, so I wouldn't get … consumed. Since I stopped painting, I design ads and go to bars and eat out with my friends, but it's only the
verdammt
surface—and I need risk. I need to be a risk-taker. 'Cause I'm a total coward. I don't tell friends this, and they can't imagine I'm frustrated. But your country is such a vast space and has so much nature. You can absorb anything.”

Sam stood rigid. No one had ever talked to him about personal feelings. His colleagues only discussed stone formation.

Suddenly Franz grabbed the rock from Sam and cried
“Christus!
” He stared at the rock in his trembling hands, and his body wavered as if buffeted by winds.

Alarmed, Sam asked, “Are you all right?”

“This rock doesn't reflect light,
nicht wahr
?”

“No.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Dangerous?”

“Will this rock harm me?”

Sam was dumbfounded.

“Do you really think it's personal?” Franz asked.

“What?”

“What you said. That rocks record the details of someone's life. Do you believe that?”

Sam nodded.

“Then it will help me.”

“With what?”

“Mit was ich brauche
—with what I need!”

And then it happened. The moment that jumpstarted everything and determined the course of Sam's life.

If you love something, you put it in your mouth.

Franz brought the rock to his lips, shoved it into his mouth, and swallowed hard. His Adam's apple leapt forward as if a tiny man trapped in his oesophagus struck his fist once against the inside of Franz's throat.

Both men looked at each other. It was impossible to tell who was more surprised.

Around them, life went on. The woman at the beverage table stirred hot chocolate. Scientists quarrelled before the exhibition booths; the Finn put his finger on a graph-line. Outside, the traffic light was red, then green, then red. Pedestrians crossed streets. In the sky, CFCs gobbled the ozone layer. At the outer tips of the world, sunrays sliced the Earth like razors.

After a moment, both men came to.

“You just swallowed a rock,” said Sam.

Franz began hyperventilating.

“That'll rupture your oesophagus—or shred your stomach muscles!
It could kill you!
”

Stunned, Franz could only gawk at the palms of his hands.

“Ambulance!” Sam shouted. “We need an ambulance!”

Sam sat beside the Swiss stranger on the way to the hospital. He said, “Why the hell did you do that? Who are you, anyway?”

He expected Franz to gasp in pain, but his voice emerged a resounding baritone. “Ich
weiss nicht.
I don't know—I'm horrified. I expected I'd do something here but not that. You awoke this in me. Thank you,” and again he touched Sam's hand. “I get so tired of fighting myself.” The ambulance went over a bump, and the stone rattled in his oesophagus. “I told myself not to risk a conference on nature, but I came. I got filled up with this intense craving yesterday at nine o'clock.” Sam's plane had landed at nine o'clock.

At the hospital, X-rays showed that Franz's rock had miraculously dissolved and been absorbed into his bloodstream. Astonished, Sam gazed at the translucent sheet lit up like the iridescent forms of the aurora borealis. Sam immediately felt he was in a fairy tale that he had never read but would one day be written.

Ecstatic, Franz turned to Sam. “How long are you in town for?”

“One month.”

“Just a month? Good. Let's experiment with this. Can I ask you on a date?”

“A date?” Then he understood. “I'm not … that way.”

“Come now, are you serious?” Franz rolled his eyes.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Sam retorted angrily. How could this man know anything about him? Sam became confused. Interest in someone of his own sex seemed too violent a break with his placid past. Still, like the compounds of the Earth, we are not one thing but several. If someone thought he was gay, fine. Homosexuals are marginal, and Sam liked being marginal.
He examined Franz's muscled torso spread out on the stretcher. Impressive. Yet Sam knew there was more to it than this. He had to uncover Franz's secret. Here was a man who had struggled with stone and conquered it. Sam wanted to get closer to his power.

“Fine,” answered Sam. “Let's meet.”

“Tomorrow morning at nine. I want to hear about the country you live in.”

The country he lived in? Sam came from a place people rarely visited and which, for some, hardly existed. He immediately saw himself alone in an empty field, crouched and staring at a rock in his hand, yet as winds blew all about him, he dared not lift his head to see where he lived because, if he did, the precious stone he clutched, its glittering crystals and asymmetrical ridges, would dissolve into dust and vanish in the wind.

Sam had experienced flings before. He'd spent the night with women who were like breezes that scuttle along the Earth's surface, disturbing not a leaf. He'd had discussions with scientists who'd forget him. He'd written articles few people read. He was a man who lived in a basement apartment and looked through a microscope lens and never asked for anything more.

Sam hadn't always been so placid. Years ago he'd been in love with a girl. Esther. She was in his grade five homeroom class. Her blonde hair rose in an elaborate, twisting labyrinth. On her shiny pencil case gleamed a picture of a mountain, and inside—this
was the exciting part—she carried a jerky-limbed wooden man with hinged joints, bulging thigh muscles, and sequins for eyes. At night Sam dreamed the man leapt from her pencil case and dance-kicked his square feet, flapping his arms in the air.
Clatter-clatter,
he'd go.
Clatter-clatter.
From his desk Sam eyed Esther, hoping she'd zip open her case.

One day he gathered stones by the seashore, fastened them together with knotted dandelion stems, and tied a flower on top. At recess Esther moseyed through the empty hopscotch court when Sam shuffled over and shoved his gift into her hand. Her cheeks reddened, her eyes watered, but with pain or gladness Sam couldn't tell. Then she frowned and said, “I don't want any of your stupid presents,” and smashed his rock-bundle against the school wall. Dandelion stems oozed juice onto the pavement.

“Can I at least see the man in your pencil case?”

Esther gasped, slapped him on the face, ran to a teacher, and complained that Sam had tried to put his hand between her legs.

His parents were notified. His father scoffed, “'Tain't no harm in what he did.” Mortified, his mother demanded that Sam attend the Friday night Bible-study group. Sam was expelled from school for three weeks and later placed in a different class than Esther. He was distressed because now he'd never learn the secret to her wooden man. Who and what was he?

On Halloween, he discovered the truth. Everyone wore costumes to school, and Sam was able to crouch incognito in a robot outfit outside Esther's homeroom. His lips trembled as he watched her slip the man from the case; she stuck a pencil into a hole hidden in the top of his head and began to grind, grind,
grind until the man's brains were full of sawdust. He was only a pencil sharpener!

Sam soon realized he was over-imaginative and expected too much. Years before, his mother had coyly said the tooth fairy didn't exist and he stopped eating for five days. Learning that the Easter bunny was a fantasy, he raced into the kitchen, snatched the coloured eggs from the fridge, and smashed each one on his father's armchair. The Christmas his mother announced that Santa was make-believe—“The pastor says these lies are Satanic. Forgive me for not knowing sooner”—he refused to open any presents. “I'll have them all for myself then,” Mother crowed, “for only God and Jesus exist.” Sam knew this wasn't true. At their church everyone waved their hands in the air, wailing, screeching, straining so hard toward belief, Sam sensed the whole thing was fake.

At the age of eleven, he devoted himself to reading the science journals in the town library. From now on he would know the world exactly as it was and not be wounded by unwelcome surprises. Two years later, hormones shot through his bloodstream and body parts spun round his brain like clothes in a dryer. Still, he would never again allow himself to feel desire mixed with a belittling hope. The first time he masturbated, the drop of sperm on his thigh caught the light and winked up at him like an eye.

In high school, Esther re-entered Sam's life. She remembered her earlier cruelties and felt responsible for his becoming an anti-social outcast. Now she pitied him. Esther assumed Sam was still attracted to her, and any boy who desired her automatically became a friend. In the high-school hierarchy, a guy who
liked you, no matter how peripheral, earned you a point, and she wanted more points than anyone.

Sam didn't want to date Esther, but enjoyed watching her. He'd discovered girls were most attractive when seen in the distance. He still loved the labyrinth of hair on Esther's head; he sensed unresolved mysteries there.

Life changed drastically in October 1984 when Sam won the school science-fair prize for his rotating wheel labelled with the planets of the solar system; the next month he was awarded the Labrador Science Trophy, and his picture was in the
Cartwright Gazette.
His mother believed the attention was making him arrogant and stuck the trophy in the garbage. But at school Sam was a hero. Briefly. Esther cornered him on the volleyball court and said, “If you want to go to the Dairy-Freeze with me, I'll buy my own ice cream.” Sam knew that if he rejected her, she wouldn't let him watch her anymore. He answered, “Okay, let's do something.”

He took her to the hamburger joint and she studied him while he ate. He was always hungry in those days. Esther said, “I'm not ordering because I gotta watch my figure. Besides, grease drips,” and she pointed to her dress. “I don't want to look like those piggy girls that act like boys.”

After a month of dating, Sam and Esther had sex in his father's car. Sam found it cumbersome; her body was as slippery as a fish's, making her hard to grip, and he kept getting her hair in his mouth. She'd mechanically roll her head back and forth murmuring “Kiss me, boy, kiss me,” but each time he tried to kiss her, the timing was off and he'd end up pressing his lips against
the side of her head. As he stared into the swath of hair whirling round one ear, he thought: I'm making love to a gorilla.

Afterwards she excused herself and said, “I gotta pee,” stepped out of the car and squatted in the bushes; Sam reached into her bag and snatched the pencil case. As her urine splattered on leaves, he pulled down the zipper. Inside, he discovered some spindly pencils. The little man was gone. She'd long ago thrown him in the garbage.

His mother believed he shouldn't date until he was eighteen. Panicking, she phoned Esther's mother. “Years ago your daughter brought out something bad in Sam. I don't know what they do when they're out, but he's been doing things with her … in his mind. I find these new stains in his underwear from … his thinking. I worry what could happen. If you don't believe me, I'll show you the stains.” Esther's mother told Esther who laughed and said, “Good for him.”

Sam began to feel Esther had little to offer. In conversation she said the same things over and over: “Dairy-Freeze's snow-cones are sweeter than Mr. Softy's” or “Dresses that come to the knee are way cooler than the mid-thigh ones.” Some days the
clackity-clack
of her voice was like a hockey card flapping in bike-wheel spokes; sex with her began to seem repetitious. It satiated a hunger, but nothing new ever happened. Esther said, “You're different for me because you got brains. I'm starting to think footballers are gross. Now I'm dating the guy who won the science fair! My parents can't believe it. You like to do experiments, Sam? Do one on me.”