Falling Through Space Read online

  The first would concern the strange mind-reading abilities of honeybees.

  The second question would be about music. “Surely music,” Doctor Thomas says, “along with ordinary language, is as profound a problem for human biology as can be thought of, and I would like to see something done about it. What music is, why it is indispensable for human existence, what music really means. Hard questions like that.”

  “Why is the art of fugue so important and what does this single piece of music do to the human mind?”

  As soon as I read that I put down the book, went to the closet where I store my records, found a Bach recording, put it on the stereo, and by the third musical phrase the tangles in my mind were unwound and I knew what to do next. The piece I was listening to was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Major, perhaps the most beautiful piece of music in the world.

  I never did find out what the third question would be.

  I WOKE THIS MORNING dreaming of the woods. An opening in a line of trees seemed to lead deeper and deeper into the woods, perhaps to a pasture, perhaps to a river. Tall pine and oak and sycamore trees arching above me and a small road of pine straw and fallen leaves to walk upon, a golden mattress of a road. It was very still, the very heart of the woods, and I was alone there and perfectly quiet and perfectly happy. Some weeks ago Southern Magazine asked me where I would like to go in the South, what I would like to investigate and learn about and praise. “The rivers,” I answered without thinking, without having to pause to think. Wherever there are rivers and trees I am happy there. I have lived too long to trust the places man has spoiled and changed and bought and sold. They have failed me every one. I cannot even remember the names of the resorts I have gone to with my rich husbands, the sadness and drunkenness and disorder of those places. But the woods. I remember every river I have ever set out upon, every pond and lake and swimming hole, every forbidden borrow pit, every tree I ever climbed or leaned into or loved. “I will go to a river,” I told the editor of the magazine. “It won’t cost much to send me where I’m going. If only I can find my tent.”

  “Which river?” he asked.

  “Somewhere in Arkansas,” I answered. “In the Ozarks. Let me call my guide and get out maps and I’ll get back to you.”

  Of all the people I have ever gone camping and river-hunting with the one who suits me best is a young man from Fayetteville, Arkansas, named Mack Harness. I call him the Trout Fisherman. He calls me the Famous Writer. We get along in the woods. I trust him not to let me get killed and he trusts me to get sullen when he smokes. It’s a nice arrangement and we have been camping out and hunting rivers and admiring trees and rocks and waterfalls together for about seven years. So I called up the Trout Fisherman and asked him to come down to Jackson and help me. He flew down and we spent a weekend looking at maps and eating roast beef sandwiches and Oreo cookies and vanilla ice cream. About ten o’clock on Sunday morning, while listening to The Well-Tempered Clavier, we came up with something we liked.

  “Let’s go up here,” I said, pointing a finger to a place on a map southeast of Fayetteville and somewhat west of Memphis. “Let’s go find the source of the White River.”

  “Looking for the White,” he said. “That’s great.”

  “Where is this?” I asked. “Here, take the magnifying glass. Goddamnit, we’ve got to get some better maps. We need some geological survey maps. Here is where it should be. Right here.”

  “That’s up by Venus Mountain. We can find that.”

  “We’ve got to go to wherever it rises. Even if it ends up being in Missouri.”

  “When are we going?”

  “The week before Thanksgiving. I can’t get away till then.”

  “It’s going to be cold.”

  “I know. Well, you’re tough.”

  “That I am,” he said, and walked out on the balcony to smoke a cigarette.

  November 16, 1986.

  I can’t wait. The woods are there and the Ozark Mountains and the rivers so cold and clear and moving so fast. Calm down, I tell myself. They have been there a long time. They’ll be there when you get there. And you can make a fire and sleep in your tent. If I can find my tent. When last seen it was in my son’s apartment in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It had better be there when I get there with no holes in it if he ever wants to borrow it again. What else do we need for a river trip? Some health food. Fritos and Nacho Cheese Flavored Doritos, Vienna sausage and rat cheese and soda crackers and chocolate chip cookies and chewing gum (in case anybody decides to stop smoking).

  November 16.

  The Trout Fisherman will fly down to Jackson on November 20 and on the twenty-first we will drive up through the Mississippi Delta, through the deltas of the Yazoo, then the Sunflower, then the Mississippi (where I was born) and across the Mississippi to the Arkansas Delta (where the Trout Fisherman was born).

  We will cross the river at Vicksburg and ride up the Arkansas side to Lake Village, the most beautiful town in the world, and on up to Pine Bluff, which has been ruined by paper mills and an arsenal for binary nerve gas, then on to Little Rock where we will tip our hat to the editor of Southern Magazine who put us up to this and is paying for the Oreos and Fritos and Nacho Cheese Flavored Doritos and Vienna sausage and soda crackers and gasoline and camera film and, God forbid, the Camel cigarettes.

  November 21.

  Bad news and a change of plans. The Trout Fisherman has had a death in his family and now will meet me in Fayetteville the Monday before Thanksgiving. So much for our drive up through the deltas, but we’ve done that before and will do it again in a happier season.

  For now I will fly up alone on Monday and we’ll find our tent and head out on Wednesday morning. The tent will only be an icon now. The Ark of the Tent. The Tent of All Tents will spend the week rolled up in the back of the Isuzu and we will go find the source of the river and return to spend the night in the Designated Driver’s geodesic dome near Goshen, Arkansas, which looks down four hundred feet onto a beautiful S-curve of the river and the fields it feeds and guards. We will sleep near water in this house the Trout Fisherman helped the Designated Driver build. “We are getting soft,” I told the Trout Fisherman. “I know,” he answered. “Well, that’s how it falls for now.”

  Since we were ruined anyway we decided to get really decadent and spent the evening seeing a double feature. We saw Peggy Sue Got Married. Took a Coke break and went back in for Star Trek IV.

  November 24. Jackson, Mississippi, Airport, 9:00 A.M. waiting.

  Leaving Jackson in a hard gray rain. Cold, straight rain with flash flood warnings. I hate to fly in weather like this. Also, I hate to leave my work as I was writing well, working on The Anna Papers.

  But a writer has to make a living. Also, a writer has to have some fun or the work gets cold. This may be too much fun. Since September I’ve been on twenty-eight airplanes. Well, two more takeoffs and landings and I’ll be in Fayetteville, pick up a four-wheel-drive Isuzu, meet the Trout Fisherman and the Designated Driver, and I’ll be on my way.

  10:53. Takeoff.

  Always a holy moment. We are flying a Northwest Airlines Saab Fairchild 253, made in Sweden, land of the gorgeous Socialists.

  Notes on plane: Good title for book, Principles of Flight. The Pearl River below me shrouded in mist, wreathed in clouds. So beautiful. Tall pines and orange-leaved oaks along its banks, cold gray water. Eudora’s river. She made it famous in the lovely short story “The Wide Net.” Also, her character King McClain left his hat on the banks of the Big Black and some say he died and others say he ran away. Rivers. So wonderful to know and love the rivers of your state.

  Flying over Mississippi at ten thousand feet in bad bumpy weather I think about my ancestors who came here on boats down the Monongahela and the Allegheny to the Ohio and on down the Mississippi to Natchez and Mayersville. What would they think if they could see me now, daring to complain about anything?

  We are approaching the Sunflower River. I can see it bel
ow me through the rain. I am wearing a soccer shirt, khaki skirt, boots, and an old raincoat one of my teenagers outgrew and left behind.

  Above Greenwood things got so beautiful I could hardly bear it. Small scattered featherlike clouds above a winding chocolate-brown river. The multicolored trees of Mississippi, cold and shrouded with mist, water oak, sycamore, maple, pine, dogwood, and persimmon.

  We landed in Memphis in a downpour and let some folks off and took some more on and took off again for Fayetteville. I am getting excited now. Going home, I have promised John Dacus at Hayes and Sanders Bookstore to be there at four for a book signing. It looks like I am going to make it after all.

  5:00: The Trout Fisherman shows up at the bookstore wearing a coat and tie. “I’m ready,” he says. “Sign my book.” “So am I,” I answer, and write my initials on his wrist. [Some people never grow up.]

  November 25.

  Fayetteville. Tuesday: Cold wet misty weather. One more day and we will leave to find the river. Perhaps the weather will clear by then and we will have a good day for the expedition. The Trout Fisherman and I are camped at the Mountain Inn where the big news is that there has been an accident at the Fayetteville water plant and no one can drink the water. Strange and prophetic that even in this remote mountain town the water is not safe. Too many people in one place. Any Indian could tell you that. The Trout Fisherman is part Cherokee, he becomes diminished when he stays too long in cities, as I do.

  When we checked into the hotel the desk clerk handed us each a gallon of bottled water and we carried them to our rooms.

  Later: It is raining cats and dogs. The Trout Fisherman left in a deluge to retrieve the four-wheel-drive Isuzu from the repair shop. He returned two and a half hours later with bad news. He had stopped off to shoot pool at Roger’s Pool Hall. It was dark when he came out and the lights wouldn’t work on the Isuzu. We decided to try to get them fixed in the morning even though it might give us a later start. Perhaps I will get to unroll the green tent after all. I went to sleep dreaming of what we would find. A spring trickling out of the ground, disturbing the leaves somewhere halfway up a hill. Would there be a marker? There was none noted on the map. People in Arkansas are good about leaving things alone. Perhaps there would be nothing there but water. I went to sleep with water beating on the panes outside the windows of my room, falling down gullies and ravines in my dreams.

  November 27: Making Our Own Fun, Or, Why Are We Always So Crazy?

  5:30: Woke up. Argued about the lights on the Isuzu.

  5:45: Trout Fisherman goes out to work on lights on the Isuzu. No luck.

  6:10: Called Trout Fisherman’s brother. Tried to borrow a truck. No luck. He was driving it to Shreveport.

  6:30: Packed Isuzu. Ate breakfast (bacon, eggs, toast, pancakes, hash browns, coffee, syrup). Got in a remarkably good creative mood.

  7:00: Drove Isuzu to Jim Ray Pontiac where a masterful service manager understood our problem, mobilized a team of mechanics, and had us on our way with a new light switch in fifteen minutes. I love Fayetteville. Where else will people take writing a story that seriously? Where else will people try to save you money while they sell you something? Salespeople in Fayetteville were always doing that for me when I lived there, pointing out bargains, telling me to wait for the sale, helping me curb my extravagant Delta ways.

  November 27.

  We are on our way. So much water. Rain and mist and clouds, a cold wet misty freezing thoroughly gray day. Perfect morning to go searching for a place where four rivers rise.

  We drive out past Goshen to pick up the Designated Driver who lives in a dome overlooking the White River just below Beaver Lake. The Designated Driver is Dave Tucker, an old friend who makes his living as a commercial artist and illustrator. He is also, not incidentally, one of the best jazz and fusion drummers in the Ozarks and played rock and roll with the Trout Fisherman’s band in their high school days. It’s a good crew. It’s going to be a good trip. We can feel it in our bones.

  We inspect the river from Dave’s balcony. Then we go down the long gravel road and out onto Highway 45, backtrack past Goshen and find Highway 16 to Elkins. It is still misty, gray from horizon to horizon. The only leaves left are on the oaks. We can see the lay of the land, the architecture of the trees, uncovered fences, cows in pastures, red and green and brown fields, barns and silos. We pass the Victory Free Will Baptist Church, Guernseys and Herefords, a field of Appaloosas, their black spots showing on their wet hides.

  Near here the West Fork of the White meets the middle fork at the bottom of Lake Sequoyah. “The first dam on the lake is at Sequoyah,” the Trout Fisherman says. Later we will learn that isn’t so.

  We go from 71 to 265 to 68 east, past Sonora, and onto Highway 16 toward Elkins. Between Tuttle and Elkins we get our first glimpse of the river before the dams.

  Beautiful country. We drive past apple and peach orchards and vineyards with their black configurations set like Chinese characters against the tilled soil.

  Near here, in Madison County, up around Red Star, a hundred little gaps and rises and valleys are the last hideouts of the hippies, the ones that went back to the land to stay.

  Everything in the Ozarks is very simple still. Even pollution doesn’t seem to have made great inroads into the beauty. Still, I remember when I first moved here, in 1979, and the scientist Anderson Nettleship, now deceased, would proclaim to me about acid rain falling on our forests from smokestacks thousands of miles away. I felt helpless in the face of that but Dr. Nettleship did not. He protested it loudly all his life, in person and in many letters to the Powers That Be.

  Another thing he used to lecture me about was the sheer idiocy of romantic love. “Childbirth, of course,” he would begin, “is the true manifestation of the creative urge. But that is another matter.” The Trout Fisherman and I knew Dr. Nettleship and loved to talk with him. If he had still been manifest he would have made a wonderful companion on this trip.

  9:50: At Tuttle we get our first view of the river above the dams. Here the river is at its widest, sixty to a hundred feet. This is the river before it starts being fucked up. Wide green flood plains, bottomland as it’s called in the hills, the watershed, what the river drains. Near Brashears we pass a house with white ceramic chickens and a red wagon beside a well. Perfect and right.

  Near Combs there are white cattle against green and red fields. In the background a stand of white birch trees against a gray sky. A patch of sunlight beginning to show in the east.

  I have been in this country this time of year when it is so golden and orange and transformed by sunlight that you can barely hold the car on the road. Black trees, orange leaves, blue skies, green moss, still green pastures, the rise and fall of a thousand hills, mountains in the distance. Dazzling. But it is proper that today is all gray drizzle and black trees and gray water pouring over white rocks. This is “water poetry time,” as the Trout Fisherman calls it. Water falling from the sky, and all around, and underneath where the great aquifers stretch all the way to Alaska.

  A day for mist and rain and water. I am feeling very chic in my hand-me-down raincoat, wondering if my boots will fit over my heavy wool socks. (We each have a pair of fine new socks, a gift from the Tentkeeper when we went by yesterday to pick up the tent.)

  The Trout Fisherman hands me a cookie. He is always feeding me. He thinks I don’t pay enough attention to myself.

  11:00: We stopped at Fleming Creek to watch a flock of mallards on the water. The bridge over the creek is so old and rickety it’s a wonder it held our Isuzu. We walked out across the rocks and stood in the middle of the creekbed watching cars go by, watching the sagging timbers of the supports sway and hold.

  “What’s keeping it up?” I asked.

  “Acts of faith,” the Trout Fisherman replied. “I hope it doesn’t fall while we’re watching.” The Designated Driver had wandered off into the underbrush looking for photographs. We stood in the water admiring the sawdust blowing off the
top of a huge sawdust mountain beside a sawmill. High hills all around with green pastures, ducks and cows and woodpeckers. Pollution seems so harmless when there isn’t much of it.

  11:30: We stopped again at St. Paul. Sugar Tree Mountain is visible from here, rising up so high and covered with a crown of mist. We went on, past Slow Tom Hollow and Hawkins Hollow Creek, past Dutton and on to Pettigrew. We had grown quiet, getting near our destination.

  11:45: Four miles from Boston, at No Name Knob after Pettigrew. The river is getting very small, lost below its rocky red clay banks. The Designated Driver is driving. The Trout Fisherman is making up water poetry. I am almost asleep and wake just as we go up a hill past a mailbox marked Love and there is the Boston, Arkansas, post office, deserted on the crest of a hill. We stop the Isuzu and get out and take photographs. A book called Married Sexual Happiness is lying facedown on a box inside the deserted post office. The Trout Fisherman picks it up and smiles at me. The Trout Fisherman and I are always talking about getting married but we never do. We are both too gun-shy and selfish and set in our ways to make promises.

  “Let’s look for markers,” the Designated Driver says and the three of us leave the post office and start down the hill toward the ravine.

  12:40: The Designated Driver and I walked down to where a geodesic survey marker stood up in the blackened leafless briers. The marker was about twenty feet below the shoulder of the road. WH it said in large block letters.

  “White River,” I announced. “This is it.” Dave climbed down another thirty feet and found a second marker on a steeper incline above a gully where water runs in torrents in the spring. I had visions of the ridge covered with snow and the sun of early March melting the snow and sending it in rushes to fill the trough. “Oh, yes,” I said. “This is surely it.” It was all very mystical and cold and wonderful. What had started out as a lark, a created adventure for a magazine article, had turned into a mystery with deserted ridges on gray November days and a lost post office crowning the ridge exactly where it should be. The Designated Driver stood at the edge of the ravine holding his camera. I was above him imagining I was standing upon an aquifer, loving (more than ever) this craziness called Arkansas, a place where men are still free, in the old sense of the word, meaning some of them at least still create and live out their own destinies. Until recently there was a usury law in effect here. No human slavery in Arkansas, no licenses to steal.