Backwaters of Beauty - Chapter 3 (excerpt)

Here's a short excerpt from Chapter 3 of Backwaters of Beauty. This might be the last part of this novel I post. There are certain aspects of the plot I can't give away without it ruining the experience for the reader who picks up the entire book, and I'm running out of sections I can post and still avoid telling too much.

I bowed out of the festivities relatively early, at around one in the morning, partly because Molly had gotten a hold of some beer and become sick, but mainly because the excitement and long stressful hours I’d put in over the previous couple days had finally worn me out, to the point where it was all I could do to gather up Molly and get us both home. The up side of all this was that I woke up the next morning with only a mild hangover, which meant that I could relax and enjoy the one day off I had before I had to start making the final preparations for our big trip under the Domes.

I’d been awake for about an hour when Silvia Guerrero showed up at my door with Michael and Naomi Martin in tow. She said that they were all heading up to Flat- Rocks Pool for the day and were hoping Molly and I would join them. I called upstairs to Molly to see if she was interested and she came bounding down the stairs practically squealing her approval of the idea.

“I guess we’re going,” I told Sylvia. “So how did you end up with these two?” I then asked, while reaching out and giving Michael a little punch on the arm, which caused him to smile and giggle a bit, before he punched my arm back in the same way.

“They’re hangover orphans,” she told me, laughing. “Their parents can barely move today so they wandered up the hill to our place looking for something to do.”

“Where’s Stefan?” I then asked, hoping he wasn’t standing outside or planning on meeting us there later.

“Chuck MacDonald’s in town and they’re up at the winery tasting and talking shop—and you know how boring they are when they get talking about that sort of stuff. Besides, alcohol is the last thing I want to deal with today.”


It took us about forty-five minutes to hike up the canyon to Flat-Rocks Pool. Normally on a hot summer day such as that one was shaping up to be there would be at least a handful of other people there. But with most of Oak Town sleeping off the night before we had the place all to ourselves. The kids were thrilled to be sole owners of the pool and immediately began throwing off their clothes and jumping into the water. Silvia and I decided to catch some sun before we went swimming and climbed up to the top of the largest of the flat rocks from which the pool got its name.

The Flat-Rocks Pool area was a beautiful place, even by the high standards of Oak Canyon. The pool had been carved thru the action of a moderate-sized waterfall, which had been created by a silted up dam that appeared to be so old that some thought it predated the Ancients. Surrounding the pool on all sides were a series of large rocks that had been flattened and smoothed by the waters of Oak Creek, which had flowed freely over them thru the many centuries before the building of the dam. Surrounding this rocky area was a large willow and two equally big cottonwood trees. Beyond these, were a dozen or so Oaks, so large and full that they blocked out much of the view of the surrounding area, which left a person with the feeling of being in his own perfect private little world.

As soon as I made it to the top of the big rock, I pulled a large towel out of my backpack and spread it out over the dark-colored stone. I then stripped out of my clothes and sat down on the towel, before slowly lying back on the rock. Though it was still morning, the rock was already starting to get hot—and its heat felt great against my skin as it came thru the towel. While I was spreading out my towel and getting undressed, Sylvia had been rummaging thru her pack looking for her little jar of sunscreen, which by this time she had finally found and was applying to her face. After placing the top back the jar and setting it on the rock next to her pack, Silvia picked her towel up off the rock, where she had laid it after pulling it out of her pack before she had started looking for her sunscreen, and spread it out next to where I was lying, with her towel overlapping a couple inches over mine. She then began unbuttoning the front of the light, cream-colored summer dress she was wearing.

“You seemed a little subdued last night,” she said a few minutes later, as she sat down on her towel next to me.

“I think overwhelmed would be a better term,” I answered back, while sitting up and then adjusting myself so I was facing her directly. “It was all just too much.”

“They were killing you with love, weren’t they?” she then said, smiling slightly, while she laced the fingers of her left hand with those of my right.

“It’s just a little weird being asked to drink toast after toast to yourself.”
“I bet.”

“Besides, you know me. Too many people at once like that always makes me … uncomfortable.”
“Miners don’t make very good politicians, do they?” she asked, while again smiling.”

“Miners are explorers …” I started, but then cut myself short when I realized that I didn’t know exactly what it was I was trying to say.

Silvia remained silent, patiently waiting for me to get my thoughts together.

“Miners constantly need to break new trails, find new things. A politician’s job is mostly to organize what others find. They’re fundamentally different professions. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” Sylvia answered after a second’s thought. “Are you happy about finding the Interface Dome?” she then asked, changing the subject in a way that caught me a little off guard.

“Of course,” I told her, as I sat straighter. “The mining community has been searching for something like this for generations and being the one to stumble upon it is incredibly exciting. It’s just that I don’t think most of us fully understand what this discovery might mean for the Towns.”

“How so?”

“Well, let’s suppose the wonks make some major breakthroughs on these interfaces. I mean, if they’re given enough time—if green fields don’t suddenly come crashing down around them—they’re bound to get deep into the systems eventually.”

“That’s probably true.”

“If that happens they’re going to be gathering all sorts of information, all sorts of knowledge.”
“Yeah, OK—”

“Well,” I said, interrupting Sylvia a bit, “when that happens we’re going to learn a lot more about what’s in the City, but more importantly we’re going to really begin figuring out how the City works, or worked anyway.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“The knowledge itself might be, but the way we will be acquiring it could be … disastrous.”
At this point Sylvia began gripping my hand more tightly, while also placing her left hand lightly on my thigh.

“What do you mean?” she then asked, while staring intently into my eyes.

“I just mentioned that miners are explorers.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, what we’ve essentially been exploring is the past. But it’s not just us miners who have been doing this—indirectly everyone in the Towns has been involved. Miners are just the first to glimpse this past, that’s all. What I’m trying to say is that every time we incorporate something from the Domes into our lives, every time we adapt it for our own use, we’re acquiring knowledge about the past, about how the world of the Ancients was made. Our lack of information concerning the basic nature of the City’s structure, and especially it defenses, has created a situation where this knowledge has been fed to us so slowly that we’ve been able to incorporate it into our lives without being overwhelmed by it. We’ve been able to more evolve with the ghosts of the Ancients, not just because of them, in other words.”

“OK, I think I get what you’re saying.”

“People just see the potential for eliminating force fields and freeing up our collection of wealth, which in itself might not be a bad thing. If this happens, though, the knowledge that’s going to come with it will alter us in ways we can’t even imagine.”

“Maybe these changes in the end will be good for us.”

“Some will be, I’m sure. But the very fact that the Ancients encased themselves in domes tells me that they were a people who didn’t like the feel of either the sun or the rain on their faces. It tells me that they wanted to control everything around them instead of just letting things exist as they must. These are not traits I want to see seeping into the Towns even a little bit. More importantly, the City was a horrible failure: its people were wiped out by their own creations—and soon we could be learning how to create these sorts of things ourselves.”

“I can tell you’ve been thinking a lot about this. Now I know why you’ve seemed so weighed down since you came back from your last mission. I had thought it was just the stress of an important new find and all the work it must entail.”

“The stress and the work have been part of it. But you’re right—I have been doing a lot of thinking. It was something Jacob Spinner said the other day, though, that really helped me understand things. He said that we if do eliminate the fields that some people might eventually want to try and re-inhabit the City. At first I found this idea so disconcerting that I just tried to push it from my mind. But then I finally had to admit that he was right. I mean, maybe people won’t physically want to move back under the Domes, but metaphorically that’s what we’ll all be doing if we learn too much about the City too fast.”

“So what can we do about it?”

“Nothing that I can see. The discovery has been made and it’s not like we can pretend it doesn’t exist. Even if the white field was to suddenly fall again we’d still know what was behind it and it would become an obsession amongst the miners, the Council, and Towners in general to find another way to get back to it—and eventually someone would find that way.”

Sylvia sat there for several seconds, looking down at the towel between her legs and thinking.
“Then let’s put it out of our mind,” she finally said, while suddenly turning around and leaning back against my chest. “Besides, if these changes do occur maybe the Towns will deal better with them than you think.”

I wasn’t sure how much faith I had in Sylvia’s optimistic view, but the soft warmth of her body against mine suddenly made me want to concentrate more on the time I was spending with her that day than thoughts on the evolutionary pitfalls that might be in the Towns future. Since we were far enough back on the rock that kids playing and splashing below couldn’t see us, I decided to engage in some risky behavior and communicate this decision to Silva by placing several lingering kisses on her shoulders and the side of her neck, while my hands reached around and cupped her bare, sensually heavy breasts, a course of action she showed her approval of by groaning a bit, arching her back forward, and pushing out her chest to meet my advances.

Self Advert #19 - Ask the Dust

Today the Guardian has posted a piece of mine on the 70th anniversary of Ask the Dust, by John Fante. Specifically, I discuss its strange and unlikely rise from obscurity to literary classic. I hope some of you get time to check it out.

Blog Rant #26 - The New Year

A new year--this has got to be a good thing. 2008 was a strange twelve months for me--artistic triumph combined with a something damn close to financial collapse. Nearly thirty years of variations off of Reaganonics have left this country in a frightening mess, and for the first time in my life I'm finding myself being caught up in a big way with the larger financial woes of the larger world--and it sucks mightily.

I feel like going into a rant about how the artist is not appreciated in this country, but I'll spare you (and myself) that; I've made my choices and I will live with them as part of the larger quiet dignity I seem to be carving out for myself these last few years. The truth is, I'd rather be a starving writer, a writer who's willing to pay a heavy price for laying down what he see as being the truth, than doing anything else I can imagine. In my twenties I envisioned myself becoming a kind of Henry Miller-like character--and that's exactly what I've become. And like him, I too will emerge from this pit laughing. Or more accurately, I am emerging from this pit laughing. Fat bank accounts are for fools and where the sea meets the sand is for dreaming. I know that my poverty means I am succeeding in life beyond my wildest dreams ...

OK, enough of this. The long promised Backwaters section will be up very soon.