SAMSON
Wind through the curly buffalo grass. Hot sun on his hat. A faint irritation of flies. He surveys the plain, humped with woolly beasts. He has shot twelve today: two bulls, nine cows, one calf. A respectable haul, though not his best. Burroughs and Masters have already bent to work, sawing off tongues, stripping hides. Soon he will join them. The afternoon stinks of dropped dung and blood and his own sweat. He mops his face with his handkerchief, wonders when his beard will grow. He would like to shave with the others, squatting by the chipped mirror at dawn, his breath fogging the glass.
He considers the cow closest to his feet, ponders her final moments. Neither Masters nor Burroughs believes in animal sentience, but he imagines their minds as small campfires within their matted heads. They would crackle and glow, cast off sparks. Riding close during a hunt, he has seen their eyes, brimming with a sorrow he recognizes. When he shoots, each orb’s light dims slowly, a fire winking out toward morn.
A bleat draws his attention. The calf has risen. It totters on wobbly legs among the carcasses. He has shot it in the shoulder, missing its heart. He does not raise his rifle. The time for such sound has passed. He strides forward, flies clouding his face, and draws his bowie knife. The calf stands still. It considers him with human eyes. He kneels, collars the calf’s neck with his arm, tilts its snout toward the sky. Its dense scent recalls his boyhood by the stove in Liverpool: his siblings in a heap, the flames dying for want of coal. A swift slice opens its throat. He pictures the child its skin will warm. The calf drops to its knees, keels onto its side. Breath huffs from its muzzle. The light fades from its pupils.
He stands up. Masters and Burroughs have made short work. Four creatures remain. He tackles them, hacking through the thick skin and tugging the hides from the bodies. He carves out hams and tongues, abandons the rest. Their wagon can carry only so much weight; he must take what will profit him. The reek of voided bowels envelops him. He tugs his bandanna over his nose.
In town, he will purchase new overalls and a shirt. Possibly a pair of boots. His own are rotten with blood, their soles cracked from the long spring. The prairie takes time to thaw, the snowmelt to evaporate. It’s hard to remember the icy winter now on this August day. Sweat stiffens his clothes. If the hides and hams and tongues fetch enough, he can do more than buy new clothes. He can visit a dance hall in Dodge City. Maybe she will be there. The one named Daisy, with hair red as his own, the base of her throat the single soft spot in town.
Daisy has never laughed at his ear. A solid lump against his skull. Liquefied like tallow, hardened to a scar. The skin around it shiny, with a bald patch where the hair won’t grow. When he chooses, he can summon its precise scent, sizzling against the stovetop. The weight of his father’s hand atop his skull. He might have understood if his father were drunk, but it was dawn, his eyes rimmed red from insomnia, not whiskey. His father shoveled the last coal into the stove and let its iron sides heat. Samson feigned sleep, watching through parted lids, but his father wasn’t fooled. How quickly he grabbed him and pressed him down. Tomorrow, his father said, you’ll go to work.
For two years he worked the docks. The vast ships sliding from shore stirred a thirst no water could quench. At their journey’s end, he imagined the land he’d begun seeing nightly in his dreams: an immense dry plain, a man walking across it. I will be that man, he promised himself.
At fifteen he sold his father’s sole treasure—a gold pocket watch filched from his own father’s corpse back in Kerry—traded the thirty-five pounds for a ticket, and boarded a steam ship west. At Castle Garden in New York, he registered with his first name alone, relinquishing his father’s with a simple negligence of the pen. Samson he kept for his mother’s sake. She had insisted it meant power, particularly with his long hair. Nonetheless, he lasted a mere week before chopping the hair off. In this New World, he told himself, he would be a new man.
With the previous weeks’ labor, they’ve enough hides now, stretched and dried in the sun. Tonight, they will sup on roasted jackrabbit and boiled beans. He will listen to the howl of wolves, and a prickle will pass from his arms to his heart. The sky, as always, will overwhelm him with stars. He will sleep to the sound of his fellows farting and snoring and grunting from bad dreams. In the morning, he will watch Burroughs and Masters scrape their chins raw in the early light and hope his twenty-first birthday will award him such bristles. Once the fresh hides dry, they will pack up camp for town, leaving broken stems where they slept, a blackened ring from their fire.
By year’s end, his pockets should be richly lined. As 1873 folds into ’74, he will be able to make an offer. A ring for Daisy, a wagon to Texas, a farm of his own. Together they might raise a son, a boy who could walk the furrows alongside him, casting seed into the rich brown soil of this country he has chosen, for himself and for all the generations to come. He has not planted seeds before, but he would like to do so. What a joy it must be to see that pioneering green stem, poking its head from the earth.
MOON
Once I had a family. It was a family of three: Uncle One, Uncle Two, and me. The Uncles called me Moon, and they loved me as their own. They fed me dust, sang me to sleep, took turns carrying me on their backs. When I entered my second year, they taught me to walk, and I learned the joy of putting one foot before the other. Keep your eyes on the horizon, Uncle Two instructed. That’s it.
We had no fixed home. Ever since I could remember, we had traveled. Once I could stand on my own two feet, I toddled beside the Uncles, doing my best to keep up. We marched across red dunes, along mountain ridges, into valleys striated with stone. We examined pebbles, cliff faces, the shades of yellow in the sky. At first, I took our nomadic existence on faith. This is what we do. We walk. But when I entered my sixth year, I thought to ask why.
We were crossing a vast plain, the Uncles eager to discover its end, but at my question, they stopped. I saw us clearly then. The Uncles tall and thin and pale, their hearts pulsing purple through their translucent chests, and I beside them, smaller and darker, rough hair sprouting from my head, my own heart mercifully hidden. We were the only living things I had ever known. Around us nothing but the plain’s vastness and the big sky, which looked terribly empty. That is what made me ask. That emptiness.
Uncle One’s white eyes widened with surprise. Surely you know, he said. Our mission is knowledge. We must learn about our sandstorms and sunsets, our oxygen and gravity. We must learn our red soil, how it shifts under us, how it hardens. We must learn our planet so that we understand our place in the universe.
But why? I asked again.
We need to see where we are, he replied, so we can see where we will go next.
And where is that? I asked.
Patience, Uncle One said. We will know when we get there.
And so, we continued. We crossed that plain and discovered its end. After that, more plains, more mountains, more valleys. Through the days we traveled, subsisting on soil and air, the Uncles teaching me what they could, studying what they didn’t know. With the arrival of each long twilight, I lay down with my head in Uncle One’s lap and listened to Uncle Two’s stories.
Uncle Two raised me on tales of my namesake and the rock around which it revolved. He told me the Moon was cold and vacant, but Earth was not. It teems with life, he said. Uncles and Moons? I asked, for I couldn’t fathom anything else. Yes, he affirmed. Night had fallen, and he pointed at the twinkling light he called Earth. It swarms with us, he said. Giant white Uncles with big bald heads and little brown Moons like you, with legs that never tire and eyes crystalline as the ice at our poles.
Is that where we will go next? I asked. To meet the Uncles and Moons? The thought woke me up. I saw again the empty sky over the empty plain, and something rippled in my chest, as though emptiness itself were running its fingers over my ribs. Tell me more, I demanded. Try to sleep, Uncle Two said.
But in the years to come, Uncle Two did tell me more. He spun stories about the Uncles and Moons who populated Earth, about their loves and contests and wars. He told me they ate dust and drank air as we did, but they also built houses—What are houses? I asked, and so he told me that too—and drafted laws and tried to keep track of history.
I had no way of knowing Uncle Two was really talking about humans and their civilization. How could I have understood he was using humans to teach me about my own future? I couldn’t have seen what he and Uncle One were planning. Over the years, we climbed the tremendous expanse of Olympus Mons and dipped into the canyons of Valles Marineris and tramped the length of the Hellas basin. We watched the sun come and go, watched our own two underwhelming moons—Phobos and Deimos—shuffle across the firmament.
This is this, Uncle Two told me as we walked, and that is that. I bubbled with questions, but I didn’t ask the right ones. I assumed the Uncles had named those places, as I believed they had named Earth. I didn’t wonder who had originally affixed such titles, didn’t think to ask from whom or from what we had sprung.
Then one day something changed.
• • •
in my fourteenth year, when my hair had begun to coil and my hips to curve, we three discovered something that was neither dune nor boulder nor stony outcropping. In morning’s raw light we saw it: a white dome swelling from the ground, red granules clinging to its sides, partially buried in sand. Even so, it loomed against the landscape. By then, I thought I had seen everything. This was new. The thrill of discovery made me skip as we approached.
Calm yourself, Uncle One admonished.
What is this place? I asked him, but he wouldn’t answer.
His normally blank eyes looked misty, as mine felt when sadness gripped me. Certain things spawned this sadness: a rebuff from Uncle Two, a low note in the wind, how that plain had seemed to stretch into infinity. But Uncle One’s feeling sad didn’t seem possible. He felt only determination to keep walking, keep learning.
I turned to Uncle Two. Where did it come from? I asked.
Oh. He sounded distant. Some things just appear. As you did.
He stared at the white sphere against the red rocks. It was huge, more bulbous than the Uncles’ heads and much taller than they. I thought of the houses on Earth that Uncle Two had described. You could fit a lot of us inside there, I thought.
Uncle Two turned to Uncle One. A look passed between them. Uncle One nodded.
How did they know this was here? I thought. But then I remembered Uncle One’s words years ago on that wide plain. This dome was our next step. We had been headed here all along.
As though he had heard my thoughts, Uncle One settled his gaze on me.
Moon, he said, it is time we took you home.
• • •
we found an entrance to the dome, half obscured by dune. Uncle One dug the dirt away. Then he took hold of the portal’s edges and pried it open. I winced at the sharp noise. One by one, we entered. The hatchway was so low the Uncles had to stoop. Just inside was another entrance, sealed. That’s a door, Uncle One told me. Then he wrenched its edges apart, revealing a dark tunnel.
Some light trickled in from outside but illuminated little. The air was dense with strange smells, odors other than dust. They made me think of my damp brown crevices, my sweat and saliva and heat. A chord within me hummed, as though my body recognized an affinity with this place.
Don’t be afraid, Uncle Two told me. Then both Uncles entered the tunnel. They seemed utterly confident striding into the shadows. I couldn’t imagine what was in there, but I wanted to find out. I followed them, stepping cautiously on the slippery surface, so different from the terrain I had known. As I inched through the gloom, the tunnel curved and the smells grew stronger, denser, more alive. I felt as if I were walking into my own self. I remembered Uncle Two’s stories about Earth, how it swarmed with life. My breath quickened.
The tunnel ended abruptly at another door. A thin seam of light gleamed through a crack. Uncle One tore it fully open, and there we were, inside the dome. Thick heat enveloped me. It was so bright my eyes had difficulty adjusting. I rubbed them until my vision cleared. Uncle Two’s stories hadn’t included what now spread before me. I didn’t own words for what I beheld. Uncle Two began to point, naming what I saw.
The color is green, he told me. That is new for you. Pink you might recognize. You know brown and white. He gestured at my sturdy body with its umber coloring, then his gangly pale limbs. I suppose purple is familiar too, he mused. He glanced down to where his heart’s dark muscle pulsed under his skin.
The green is for the leaves, he continued, brown for the trunks. Those are trees, Moon. The pink and purple and white are flowers. Look. He sounded gleeful. Some are yellow and some are blue, he said. Green also belongs to the vines and shrubs and weeds. They are plants and plants make oxygen. That’s why it smells so different in here. He squeezed my hand. This dome holds a forest, as alive as you or I. See how delicate the flowers are, how tough the vines. See how high the trees reach? They are constantly seeking light. He paused and cocked his head at Uncle One. How is everything still living? he asked. And the electricity on?
Solar power, Uncle One replied. It’s linked to an irrigation system too. He pointed upward. The panels are embedded in the dome.
Uncle Two tilted his head back and then nodded in admiration. How ingenious.
I suppose they weren’t entirely stupid, Uncle One said.
Who are they? I asked.
Oh. Uncle Two waved me off. The great they, he said. The omniscient they.
He pulled me into the forest. We waded into a patch of flowers. Around us clustered plant after plant, shrubs and trees and weeds. High above us curved the dome, glittering with what Uncle One had called solar panels. The colors were so vibrant my head had begun to hurt, the air so sticky I found it hard to inhale. I wanted desperately to like it. This is the next step, I told myself. We are here. Breathe.
Look at this, Uncle Two urged. He pointed at one flower. See those petals, he said, more yellow than our sky? That is a black-eyed Susan.
How do you know their names? I asked him.
We were here once. Like Uncle One’s, his eyes grew misty.
They did know it was here, I thought. They brought us here on purpose.
You and Uncle One? I asked.
You too, child. He pulled me against him in a quick hug. We were all here.
I stood there incredulous. Why can’t I recall this?
He bent down to brush a bloom’s frail pink petals with his palm. You were only a few days old when we left, he said. You wouldn’t remember.
I searched for Uncle One, but he had meandered into the forest. I could see him between the trunks, stopping now and then to scrutinize something. His heart appeared to be pumping more quickly. Everything he found seemed to enthrall him, but my initial wonder was ebbing. It must have been the smell. The fumes in that place were overpowering. Fetid and cloying, with an underlying stench that reminded me of the time we witnessed a star wink out forever. Death. That’s what it stank like.
• • •
the dome was not only a dome. The Uncles showed me what lay under the surface. Uncle Two opened a hatch in the dome’s floor. That is a ladder, he said to me. Climb down. I clambered down it to another tunnel, and the Uncles followed. I was relieved to escape the dome’s damp decay. From the first tunnel, we walked into another. Then another. The tunnels were brightly lit, but a layer of dust coated everything. This comforted me. We hadn’t left the dunes entirely behind.
The tunnels led to small enclosed spaces Uncle Two called pods. Some were already open, but others were still sealed. Uncle One pried those apart. These were for sleeping, Uncle Two informed me. He gestured at an oblong object nearly the same size as I was. It looked softer than anything I’d known. That’s a bed, he said. He picked something even softer off the floor and tucked it over the bed. That’s a blanket, he told me.
And this? I held up something gray I’d found in a corner. It had limbs and a torso, but seemed more like a discarded skin than a body. When I held it against me, I saw it didn’t quite match my height. On the front flashed something that looked like a star, but red.
Oh. Uncle Two snatched it from me. That’s a rag. For cleaning. He swiped it across a surface to pick up dirt.
Put that down, Uncle One told his brother. Let’s go, he said and stalked off.
Uncle Two dropped the rag and followed him. I scampered to keep up. The underground tunnels arced higher than the entrance had. The Uncles didn’t have to bend much.
Teach me more, I called after them.
At another pod, I caught up with them. I didn’t know what all the square spaces and lights were for, but the lingering scent gave me a clue. It didn’t smell like the soil we ate, but it made me hungry. This is the eating pod, I announced.
Yes, said Uncle Two. You’re learning.
Look at this. Uncle One waved us over. He was leaning over a white basin. He turned what he called a handle, and something almost familiar poured out. It was wet like my sweat but silvery and fluid as the trail of a shooting star. That’s water, he proclaimed.
By morning’s end, we had cataloged the entire place. Aboveground the dome with its mysterious forest and high paneled ceiling. Belowground the network of tunnels and ladders and pods. We had found five sleeping pods, one eating pod, and one with multiple handles that spewed water, where Uncle One said we’d begin excreting. We also found a pod filled with flat square things that shone in the artificial light. Those are screens, Uncle Two said, but couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain what they were for.
Uncle Two had spent years answering my questions, but he seemed impatient or preoccupied or both. He kept conferring with Uncle One, who was determined as ever, tearing open the entrance to each pod and marching in to right tilted objects or brush dust from surfaces. Despite my excitement, I felt an odd foreboding. The next step, I thought, watching Uncle One shake a blanket over a bed. I had assumed our future would be among the cliffs and clouds I had come to love. In my wildest dreams, I had imagined we might go to Earth. Yet we had ended up here, where I couldn’t even see the sky.
The last pod Uncle One pried open contained piles of dirt sprouting things I presumed were more trees. No, corrected Uncle Two. Those are potatoes. His patience had returned. For this I was grateful. I needed the Uncles. I didn’t know how I would learn anything without them.
• • •
that night i couldn’t sleep. My pod was narrow and stuffy. The quiet of it pressed upon me. I missed the Uncles’ warmth, their bony backs against mine, their white eyes peacefully closed. My own eyes kept opening. I kept thinking about the dome, its overwhelming colors and damp stench. I missed the glittering dark above, the nighttime winds, the firm pillow of a boulder under my head.
I could have gotten up, climbed the ladder, navigated the dark tunnel to the broken hatchway. I could have returned to the world I had known. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to leave the Uncles.
Resolutely, I closed my eyes. They popped back open. The bed was short and horribly soft. I rolled off it and finally managed to fall asleep on the floor.
• • •
uncle one announced our traveling had finished. Is this our future? I asked. Indeed it is, he said triumphantly. He insisted we would make a home there. The Uncles shook out blankets, swept away dust, yanked dead flowers up by their roots. Mostly I sulked, lying flat on my pod’s floor or moping around the tunnels. I had wanted to know what would happen next. I had thought we might meet other Uncles, other Moons. But we were stuck inside a place cluttered with plants and blankets and water. Nothing that could speak to me.
Uncle Two tried to keep me engaged. He kept dragging me to the dome to teach me words. Eucalyptus. Mountain laurel. Pine. But I had trouble paying attention. All that green disgusted me. It was too wet, too alive, and too dead at the same time. The plants remained mute, as silent—I realized—as our planet itself.
Then Uncle One said we would eat the potatoes instead of dust. More nutritious, he insisted. We tried them some days after our arrival. Even Uncle One gagged. He covered it up quickly. So did Uncle Two. They polished off their potatoes without complaint, but I could see how they clutched their stomachs afterward. Now you, Uncle One insisted. Dutifully I picked mine up. I managed one bite. It was moist and mealy, different from dirt’s dry crunch. I had to excuse myself to vomit, another novel sensation. As I heaved over the basin in the excreting pod, I sensed Uncle Two behind me. He pulled my long hair back and rubbed my shoulders until the cramping eased. I leaned against him, and he rested his chin on my head.
Why do we have to eat potatoes? I asked. Why can’t we eat dust?
We must consume what we grow. Uncle One says we have to, Uncle Two replied. He says we’re civilized now.
What is civilized? Is it bad?
He made a sound, but I didn’t know what it meant. I asked Uncle One the same thing, he said. He told me it doesn’t have to be.
Tell me when we can go outside again, I said.
Soon, Moon. He nuzzled my hair. When Uncle One says we can.
I pushed myself away. Why must we do what he says?
He’s family. Uncle Two shrugged. We have no choice.
• • •
i tried to entertain myself. I folded and refolded my blanket. I poked at the potatoes in the underground garden. I visited the pod with the things Uncle Two had called screens. The screens marched in rows along the pod’s perimeter. They were the length of my forearm, the width of my two hands. Each one was resting on a surface and tilted slightly back against the wall. The screens’ faces were black and shiny and blank. I picked one up. My own face stared back at me, reflected in the surface. I had not seen it before, and the sight delighted me. I liked my smooth cheeks and wide mouth, how proudly my nose arched. I liked how my features moved, how expressive they were. The Uncles’ faces were blank as the screens. They couldn’t smile or frown or cry as I could. I don’t know how I learned, because no one existed to teach me.
My eyes were pale blue as the snowdrops in the dome, but clear too. Like ice, I thought, remembering how Uncle Two had described them. I turned my mouth up, turned it down, grinned with all my teeth. “Speak to me,” I told my reflection.
The sound startled me. I had used my out-loud voice, the one I hardly used, and never used with the Uncles. I half expected a voice to respond, but the screen was a dead thing, another object in a place full of objects. ...
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