Where the Sea Used to Be (19 page)

When the fire had burned completely out, they crept out on their bellies and peered down into the water.

Zeke was still down there, his arms still reaching up. It looked almost as if he could still be saved. They lay there a long time watching him—the falling snow cold on the backs of their necks—and then Wallis got up and went back to the cairn and waited.

When Colter finally stood and came back to the cairn, his tears were frozen on his eyelashes like little crystals. He brushed them from his face like crumbs.

Wallis had thought Colter would want to head home after that, but instead Colter stayed with him and they headed back toward Mel's. They did not travel on the road, but explored the woods, searching for, and finding, a few more antlers. The snow was finally beginning to let up, dispersing beneath a north wind as they neared the cabin at dusk.

They could smell Mel's cooking—pies and bread baking, and a venison ham. When they entered the cabin the scents deepened, and Colter paused for a moment, remembering previous Christmases. Mel, who had not heard them come up on the porch, was startled, then looked disappointed. “I don't guess you saw them,” she said.

Wallis shook his head. “We went to see Zeke.”

Outside, the wind, stronger than ever, shaped and swirled the new snow into powdery drifts. The snow made a sifting, tatting sound against the windows, like thrown sugar, or sand. They could see bright stars appearing above the rivers of snow, which were snaking southward.

“I hope they're not out in this,” Wallis said.

Mel shook her head. “They'll be okay, if they don't panic. Matthew should be okay. If they get in trouble, they can just burrow in on the lee side of a big spruce, make a nest under all the snaggly branches, and light little fires all night. They might have to share the space with a couple of grouse or snowshoe hares, but they'll be okay.” She smiled, thinking of Old Dudley being forced to take refuge in such a manner. “Was Zeke still there?” she asked.

Colter nodded, then turned away and went to the window to watch the wind redistributing the snow. Mel wet her thumb and rubbed at Wallis's cheek and forehead. “Y'all are both covered with smudge,” she said. Throughout the day she had been thinking about how it had not been so bad sleeping in Wallis's arms on the couch, and she had been worrying that once she had taken such a small pleasure as that one, it might be as if a gate had been opened: that like some kind of glutton, she might begin to desire more from him. She was relieved, as she dabbed the smudge from his face, to realize it was not this way. Still, she was surprised to find that she wanted him to look presentable when Matthew and Old Dudley came.

“Here comes Ma,” said Colter, still staring out the window. “She's got the carolers out with her tonight.” Now they could hear, carried on the strong wind and leaking in through the cabin chinks, the sounds of children singing, and of adults' voices, too—among them Amy's voice, pure and perfect.

They could see lanterns held barely aloft above the shimmering snow rivers—and as the singers grew closer and clearer they saw that there were two great draft horses, each as large and dark as a moose, plowing the snow ahead of them, and that several of the smaller children rode atop the horses, safely above the flowing snow dunes, which were glowing now with the color of the stars. The temperature had fallen at least thirty degrees in the last hour. There was not even the warmth of a moon.

Mel and Wallis and Colter went out onto the porch to greet the carolers, expecting them to tumble into the cabin blue-lipped, exhausted, and frostbitten; but first the carolers had work to do. They had not come this far not to deliver that which they desired to give, and they sang “Silent Night” beautifully, though it seemed incongruous with the wind still blowing and the snow hurling itself against the cabin.

Wallis and Mel and Colter, without coats, and without the warmth of activity, found themselves wishing the song would move faster; and when it was finished, the children came inside, steaming like animals (Amy and Colter went and haltered the horses on the back side of the cabin, out of the wind), and they kept singing, filling the cabin with their sound: more people in the cabin than perhaps there had ever been at once, and so many of them singing.

The children finished that carol—“God Rest Ye Weary Gentlemen”—and began shedding their coats and boots. Clumps and mounds of snow lay everywhere.

Mel hesitated only slightly before bringing out the pies and the fresh-baked bread, still warm, which she sliced and spread with honey. The children sat down and fell to the feast as if they had not eaten in weeks and would not be eating again for some time. The boys smelled the venison and asked about it, and Mel brought it out for them—it was glazed with honey and sugar—and they fell upon it, too; the entire ham was gone in less than a minute after having been cut and served.

It was harder than usual for Mel to let go of the regret that Matthew and Old Dudley were not there to see and hear and enjoy the carolers, but she did. She had gotten good at living without regret, over the years, and she released this one as she had the others and stepped forward into the moment. She looked over at Wallis and smiled.

The wind had died down and a great cold and a silence had settled over the valley. When all the food was gone, Mel made hot chocolate, and they drank it by the fire, warming themselves for the journey home. They sang more carols before dressing again and stepping out onto the porch into a cold so brittle that it seemed the air around them would shatter to crystals just from the act of their walking through it.

Amy asked Colter if he wanted to go home with them—Mel's cabin had been their last stop of the evening, and now Amy would be returning the children to their homes—but Colter said that no, he wanted to stay there with Wallis, and that he would be home in the morning. Amy looked hurt, but only for an instant, and she studied Colter for a moment as if he were going on some journey or voyage. Then she smiled and thanked Mel and Wallis and told them good night and Merry Christmas. She lifted the smaller children onto the warm backs of the draft horses, who were throwing so much heat that standing next to them was like standing next to a stove whose fire has only so recently gone out that it is still warm to the touch.

The children leaned their faces in against the horses' necks to feel that warmth, holding on tightly with mittened hands; and like icebreakers at sea, the horses set off into the starlit snow, which was now sanded as smooth as the surface of a calm lake.

Their old trail had been filled in by the wind, but they took the same route out, the horses pushing through snow up to their chests. They plowed resolutely through it not only as if unaware they were retracing the same path they had just carved out less than an hour ago, but as if enjoying the labor.

Wallis, Mel, and Colter stood on the porch and watched the glow of the lanterns, a dark procession, disappear into the woods; and even after the procession was gone, they remained there and listened to the singing.

They heard other singing, too—the wolves on the mountain behind them—and they listened to that for a while, and then Mel went back down to the smokehouse—running, because she was cold; running across the taut-frozen shell of snow as if it were a hardened cast of concrete, so quickly and deeply had the temperature dropped—and she came back quickly, carrying a goose and an elk shoulder. They went inside and shut the door against the cold, and Mel began cooking all over again, preparing once more for the visitors she was not even sure were coming.

As if in a parlor game, a thing to keep Colter entertained, Wallis pulled down one of Old Dudley's journals and read aloud to Colter, while Mel baked and breaded and basted.

 

Scenes from the Coal Period

How the Coal Beds Were Formed

While the grisly monsters of the ancient deep were luxuriating in empire and blood, the premonitions of progress were felt. The world was not made for them, but only an
age
of the world.

Behold, the tide bears out into the sea a floating log. Its exterior is marked by peculiar and significant impressions. They reveal the crest of a dynasty in the vegetal world. They are the seal of a
Sigilla'ria.
It has
floated from the shore of a low-lying and silent continent. There is a meager nursery there where nature is training vegetation for thriftier times. In this log is written the doom of the old placoderms which had stirred the Devonian mud of the sea bottom. It is a voice crying in the wilderness of waves. Prepare the way for new land, new forms, new sense, and new history. God almighty, Man is coming!

It was back then the beginning of the Carboniferous Age. The tremors incident to the upthrow of a new belt of land had strewn the submerged continental slope with the sandy ruins of older lands and left the bed to mark the beginning of a new system of strata. They were not outspread in a day. They were laid down only with the destiny to be tom up in the human age—to serve as foundation stones for our more elegant structures.

Meantime the waters deepened, and nature seemed to have forgotten her announcement. She had promised land and green forests; but instead she gave deep sea and an expansion of the empire of bony-scaled ganoids. She gave larger development to Brach'iopods. She dallied with the chambered shells and gave the world an improved type, which we have named
Goniatites.
She lingered lovingly over one of her ancient conceptions which we style crinoidal. She had had it in her repertory of beautiful thoughts since early Cambrian times—the pretty little stone lily. She had taken it up in every age, and had turned out yearly some improvements and some new decorations.

But now, during this waiting period for man, she seems to have returned with true devotion to one of her first ideas. She gave great attention to diversifying life, decorating it, and filling the sea with its delicate and graceful forms. All for only the Age—not for perpetuity; for it, while we stand on this verge of a grand epoch, we lift the veil which separates the one beyond
,
we find the crinoidal conception gradually falling into forgetfulness.

But then this dream of placid waters and teeming populations was broken as if within a dropped jar. Some long pressed crust of the earth was broken by the accumulated strain, and the mud of the sea was stirred from its prolonged repose, and floated over the fields where those crinoidal stone lilies had flourished, generation after generation.

Tenants of the sea, alarmed, retreated to deeper waters or perished in their homes, and received a Pompeiian burial. The ocean bottom had been lifted to a higher level! The scene was totally changed. The summer
sea became a stormy and turbid shore; and a broad belt was given to the land. The tom beach, crumbling before the waves, contributed coarse rubble for the foundations of new land in some future age.

The vegetation promised for the impending epoch was crowding into possession of the ground. It flung its fragments into the deep in challenge to the conflict which now sent its murmur through the world. These chips from the bystanding forest were buried in the sands which loaded the sea bottom.

Everything was ready; the curtain was about to rise.

Now came the first charge in the conflict destined to alternate during an age. The land uprose by another notch; the bottom of the sea was lifted to the surface. The great
“Carboniferous Conglomerate” was now first bathed in air and sunlight. The new territory included all the regions which had been selected as the sites of the capacious coal repositories for the use of civilization: Man! All this was being prepared lovingly for man.

It was not a dry upland. It was a broad and mighty marsh. Texas was not included in the common continental marsh, but stood apart for a special destiny.

Now, over all this breadth of bog and swale sprang up vegetable growths—trees and herbs, ferns and rushes, with the all-engrossing airs of those who come to hold possession. Whence these forms? Some, as I said, had been nursed on the older and contiguous land, and now entered upon a new possession because these patterns were already in existence. Some sprang from germs fresh planted by some unseen hand. What mean all these transformations? They mean progress. They mean man. They mean civilization. It is not change alone; it is improvement.

This luxuriant crop is sustained by the carbonic acid of the atmosphere. This, as is generally supposed, was in excess. It made the air irrespirable; no terrestrial creature could live. But terrestrial animals must constitute the next step of progress. Man
must
arise from the swamp.

The march of improvement had now gone as far as possible with water-breathing populations. The highest type of animals had been reached and its aquatic class had lived a striking career. Nature had now paused for the purification of the air for the next class. The plan of nature was blocked until this could be done. Man had to arise; man had to be summoned.

The power which had called matter and force into existence could
have made other disposition of this difficulty. The carbonic acid could have been combined with lime and fixed in limestones. It could have been banished from the planet. But carbon is precious. It is the basis of all our combustion. It warms and blazes in coal and petroleum, peat and gas. The carbon must be preserved for future use. Man would discover its utilities, though in the age then passing had no use for it. Man was yet far off; but man was anticipated; man was involved in the plans of the world; man was prophesied in these preparations. The earth must receive her kings.