gone, my sister Mary, the sitting room, the electric fire, the settee. But it wasn’t me or them I was really thinking of—it was those short men crouching in the desert with their bows and poisoned arrows.
“‘Where are those little men now?’ I asked my father.”
“‘Dead.’”
“‘All of them?’”
“‘It was years ago those pictures were taken.’”
“‘And what about the paintings on that rock?’”
“‘They’ll still be there, I reckon, if the rain hasn’t washed them away.’”
“‘Sure? You mean, if we went there, you and me and Mum and Mary, we could see them?’”
“‘Your mum would never go on such a trip. But when you’re dead and gone, those pictures you draw now, if someone thinks to look after ’em, it’ll be as though part of you’s still here.’
“That’s when I caught the bug. I’d always wanted to be an artist. I had a knack for it, but compared with a real professional, I wouldn’t have made the grade. Through luck and a little elbow grease, I was given a scholarship to Cambridge. Studied anthropology and fine arts and fell into this. What about you?”
Most of the group had drifted away. It was just Sam and Motsumi tending the fire. “What about me? I’m from the Midwest. My mother and I lived close to the river that borders Ohio and Kentucky, just the two of us. My father drowned when I was four. He was a cop. Apparently he was trying to arrest a man running across the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge. It was around one in the morning. He jumped over a railing after the guy and they figure he didn’t realize there was a break between the road and the pedestrian walkway. In the dark, he thought he was jumping onto the walkway, but he landed in the river. The water was so cold it took three weeks for his body to surface.”
Across from them, Sam pushed a large log into the center of the fire. It flared and sent sparks toward the stars. “Do you remember him?” Ian asked softly.
“Not really.” Not memory, but imagining the ice floes far below, the shock when he hit, every fiber of his body broken with disbelief.
“I used to like swimming in very cold water,” he said and stopped. “I’m sorry, that was a right stupid thing to say.”
“It’s all right. What did you like about it?”
“I guess the simple surviving of it. Mind you, I don’t have a self-destructive nature. Nor did I have one then. It was something else. Heightening life, I suppose.”
He was quiet a moment, looking upward. “Have you read van der Post? He talks about how every human on Earth has a longing for the vast. How does he put it? As the natural coherence of the world vanishes, there’s a guilt that grows great and angry in the basement of our being. The beast wants its day. And culture wants to desensitize us to what we’ve lost. That’s why Bushmen are all but stamped out. They’re a direct threat to a ‘civilized’ culture that’s inherently unstable. All you have to do is look at one of their paintings, and you know what we’ve lost. They’re alive to the tiniest gesture: the way an impala turns, the way an antelope lifts its head.”
“Didn’t van der Post father a child with a fourteen-year-old girl who was under his care on a sea voyage?”
“I don’t know. It’s likely that he did. Not good form. But still, does that wipe out everything else he ever said or did? The point is, people have lost their courage. They’ve gone for safety. No one wants to be reminded what a tiny speck in the universe we are, but knowing that’s the key to everything. We’re afraid of big spaces. We herd for safety, and before you know it, you’ve got civilization. But in the wild, look what happens. Which animals do lions choose to prey upon? Zebra and wildebeest. Animals that travel in herds. The herd feels like safety, but it only makes us more vulnerable.”
“Animals in herds are safer. The chances for any individual’s dying is slim.”
“I don’t mean we need to wander around in the desert by ourselves. I mean face how ridiculously small we are. Just look at this sky. How many hundreds of billions of galaxies are we seeing, as big or bigger than our own? Freedom comes from knowing you’re a dot. Smaller than a dot.
Sam and Motsumi had gone to their tent. “Listen to me pontificating,” he said.