talked loudly to a friend. “You're going to have to get rid of her, Richard,” she said. “Her needs are not in alignment with yours. She's very, very demanding, and you're going to have to recognize this. You like to keep these women hanging around, but it's not healthy. Remember that time in the sauna?” He wondered who Richard was, and if he wanted an assessment of his private life broadcast so clearly and specifically in the Travel section of Elliott Bay Books.
But people talked to each other all the time, everywhere, loudly, in public; there was no privacy protocol. It was while you were traveling that you most wanted to connect. Everyone in airports had phones clamped to their heads, talking, talking, talking to make sure their lives at home were intact, that their places in the world were still held, that they were still connected to something. On 9/11, all those doomed people on the airplanes, calling home, as though the connection itself could keep them alive.
Steven gazed out the vibrating window and felt the humming of the bus through his body. He'd read somewhere that all engines hummed in the note of E. He wondered if it were true and, if so, why? Was it metallurgical—was all metal intrinsically tuned to the same key? Or to do with the way engines worked? Engines all over the world—mopeds in the Philippines, vacuum cleaners in Edinburgh (DC current), hairdryers in India, trucks in Detroit—all humming a jubilant, unheard, universal chorus.
Outside, the trees were in place again, foaming thickly over the fence. Behind him, unimaginably distant now, was Seattle: the low friendly city, with its glittering waterside, the peaceful rhythm of the streets.
He thought of Eliza at the café on the last day. Her silky blond hair, short and thick as suede. Her hands curved around her coffee mug: her stubby, bitten fingers, like a child's. The clay rimming the bitten nails, she was a potter.
“I might come back after Christmas,” Steven said, his words audibly untrue. They were sitting outside, on a cobblestone pedestrian mall. Behind Eliza he could see a street singer approaching them, with a battered guitar and a wide professional smile.
Eliza nodded, behind her mug.
“That'd be good.” She understood he didn't mean it. She looked at him steadily. “It's too bad there aren't any law schools out here.” This— gentle sarcasm—was the closest she would come to accusation.
Steven looked into his own mug, stirring it with the flimsy plastic stick. He could not explain exactly what had happened, how it had become clear that his time here was over.
The singer stood beside their table, already strumming. His guitar was held around his neck by a band of red hand-woven cloth. Steven looked up, the singer gave him a folksy grin. Steven's own face was stiff. “No, thanks,” he said.
Steven's arrival here, a year earlier, had seemed like the discovery of a new country—glittering water, amiable people, the unknown Western birds. That sense of being on the very edge of the continent, on the shore of the raging misnamed Pacific, with its towering storms and plunging surf. Beyond it all were the great reaches of Asia. The Northeast looked toward Europe, but here in the Northwest it was Asia you looked to, wide, ancient, and mysterious. Stretching above you was Canada's cool green wilderness.
Steven had wanted to leave the East for somewhere less known. He wanted to do something serious and positive, and in Seattle it was easy to find a project. Nature was nearby, and important; idealism was current.
He joined an environmental NGO set up to protect a stretch of old-growth Douglas firs from clear-cut logging. Everyone in NOCUT was cheerful and energetic. They went hiking together on weekends, they all loved the wilderness. Jim Cusack, the head of it, was in his mid-thirties, older than the others. He was bearded and friendly, and wore work boots and plaid flannel shirts. He knew how to get funding, organize, draft petitions.
Things went well at first. They raised money, collected signatures, were written up in the paper. They set up a meeting with a congressman who sat behind his desk in his shirtsleeves, frowning intently, listening, nodding at each point. He shook everyone's hand when they left. They felt exhilarated then, but later things began to stall. There were no more articles, and the logging company refused to take their calls. The congressman's schedule was now crowded. When it became clear that logging was imminent, Jim suggested guerrilla tactics. He said they should chain themselves to the threatened trees.
There was a collective thrill at the idea of action. This was more than making phone calls and collecting signatures. The idea of using themselves, their own bodies, aroused them. They knew they would succeed. They were invincible. This was a holy war, and they were on God's side.
The day of the chaining started early—the middle of the night, really. Steven got up while it was still dark, moving quietly through his apartment. He felt the night outside, the sleeping people all around him. He felt a sense of urgency and purpose. His apartment was on the third floor, and when he left it, he kept his footsteps light on the stairs, nearly soundless. They were meeting in the office parking lot, where he parked among the cluster of pickup trucks. Dim figures stood around them. Everyone spoke in low voices. There were meant to be twenty of them, but only twelve had showed up: eight men and four women. They waited until Cusack said they should go. He said this happened, people changed their minds. He didn't say anything about people getting scared.
They'd kept their plan quiet, not wanting to alert the logging company, but they'd told a reporter, swearing him to secrecy and hoping for coverage. It all felt serious—the strategy, the secrecy, the meeting in the chill predawn. There was the chance of danger; it seemed like war.
The reporter hadn't shown up, but they hoped he'd meet them there. Steven went with Cusack, heading out onto the dark roads. Once they were on the highway, Steven turned to Cusack. “So, have you done this a lot?” He was ready to hear the stories. But Cusack did not smile or look at him. Eyes on the road, he shook his head. “Never,” he said. Fuck, thought Steven.
After the highway they took smaller, narrower roads, finally jouncing slowly over the dirt logging trail. The trail ended deep in the woods, in a rough open circle, the ground hugely torn and rutted. Around it towered the great Douglas firs. Their shadows shifted and fled from the beams of the flashlights. Faces, lit weirdly from below, became those of strangers. They stumbled on the uneven ground, the chains they carried clinking faintly. They felt the great shadows of the woods all around them.
They each took a tree, Cusack directing. Steven walked his chain twice around the huge trunk. Snugging the cold links up against his chest, snapping the padlock, gave Steven an odd flicker of excitement and fear. The bark against the back of his head was rough, and links of the chain dug in at his hip. There was no easy way to stand. The discomfort felt sacrificial, daring. They were at risk.
At first they called back and forth, laughing, but after a while the darkness and silence of the forest settled into them, and the voices stopped. The trees, reaching loftily overhead, became larger in the stillness. They could hear the high limbs shifting in the faint wind. It was still early, before daylight, and Steven began drifting in and out of a waking sleep. It was impossible really to sleep, standing up, chained against the trunk, but it was also impossible really to stay awake, in that lightless stillness. His mind drifted, freewheeling; he was not asleep, but he seemed to be dreaming. Great animals moved slowly around him, and something was not right, was there a storm in the offing? An eruption, an earthquake? The landscape was apocalyptic, full of dangerous lights and dread. He waked in darkness, confused, his neck stiff.
The light came imperceptibly, at first merely a shift to grayness in stead of blackness. Silhouettes and outlines became visible—or did they? Nothing was certain. They vanished in the dimness, then reappeared, finally taking on substance. Slowly the scene took shape: the huge shaggy trunks, standing all around him. Tiny fir cones, scattered on the rough needle-carpeted floor
