Denial

A gray mare carried a twelve-year-old girl through the town of Evalsne. Horse troughs lined the empty, dust-strewn street on either side of her, and gray pine buildings bore false fronts in the old Western style. Mountains, majestic, but drought-stricken, rose in every direction and formed a kind of hollow where the town lay. The girl rode bareback, guiding the horse with a halter and the pressure of her thin thighs. There was no bit, and her bare feet couldn’t reach the stirrups.

She neared a blacksmith shop where flames spiked in a forge. A man lifted his tongs from the coals and squinted into the light. “Good day to you, Annie,” he called out. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you, Mr. Calhoun,” Annie said, shyly looking away.

She slid from her horse, swung her reins over a hitching-post, stroked the mare’s neck, and strode into a dry goods store.

A woman with kind eyes and gray hair greeted her in the oil lamplight. “Annie, did I hear you’re close to your awakening day?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Annie said.

“We all go through it.”

“I know, Miss Stevens.”

“You’re a smart girl. A good girl.”

“Thank you.”

Annie stepped from the warmth of the shop into the blinding sun, and onto a wood-planked walkway. The townspeople—moving as if in a trance—streamed by. There were horses pulling wagons with the fruits of a harvest: orange melons, red apples, and grapes heaped in baskets. At the corner, a group of minstrels strummed guitars in sombreros. Laughing children watched a brass band near a horse stable, the horns loud and clear. White-tipped magpies dove and weaved in the sky.

With a town like this, you might think its people were happy. But I suspect you’ve decided the townsfolk were unsatisfied and bored. Maybe they were satisfied with their basic needs—food, shelter, and amusements—but the scene was too sterile to believe they were truly happy. Something was wrong.

Perhaps we need hardship to add believability.

The corn grew lower every year, the wheat field thinner, the alfalfa not at all. The elders of Evalsne explained this was because in the time before memory, the star Sirius rose, the brightest star in the summer sky. These were the dog days of summer—Dies caniculares. Orion chained the dog with a leash of light. Bound to the rope, the dog star’s breath poured down like fire onto the earth. But then the chain leash broke, and the land cracked from the searing dog’s tongue. With the fetid heat, the world felt the weight of refugees streaming north and south, but even the poles were not far enough.

The old men of the town explained the sky held a Teumessian fox who escaped from the heat. An unbeatable hunter chased the fox, but the fox was uncatchable. The paradox of the unbeatable chasing the uncatchable turned the world not to stone, but to ash. And just like this paradox, the people came to believe to achieve happiness, you must know pain. Without experiencing pain, how would you know you’re happy? To gain understanding, you must contrast the one with the other, the good with the evil.

Annie heard it all. She heard Mr. Calhoun at the smithy, shaping an iron goddess, tell a boy that pain makes beauty. She heard Sallie Makesbe, paintbrush in hand, say her best landscapes came from lonely winters. And she saw the sign at the edge of town, Samuel Bedevek’s carved words catching the light—lines that felt like loss tearing a heart out.

You doubt me about the need for contrast; I understand.

“Can we decide on a proposition,” the old ones asked. “If behavior is always good, how can one know what is not good? Without comparison, it’s all the same. To know happiness, you must also know what it is to be miserable.”

And so the wagons of Evalsne rattled on the crumbling ruts with Annie and her friend Duncan wedged with the other children. Dust rose behind them as the road climbed into the mountains. Finally, the wagon dropped into a wide valley where high desert sagebrush stretched to a hazy and unknown horizon. The wagon arrived at oak-beamed platforms where guards stared blankly down from towers, rifles in hand. The horses plodded through an iron gate with concertina wire coiled on each side. A woman in a tight gray uniform waited for them. She led them into a building covered with tin siding. The heat gripped them as the doors opened, the smell unbearable. Inside were hundreds of workers lined up on benches. The thunder of sewing machines split Annie’s ears. She glanced at Duncan, and his mouth hung open. Rows of women concentrated over the machines. Guards stood at the end of each row. The workers were in rags, bones showing where clothing had fallen away, their faces dark and hopeless. Duncan gagged behind a row of shelving. And then the stench that had gripped Duncan also assaulted Annie. She retched into the pools of urine and fecal waste between the rows of workers.

The guide had them re-board the wagon and led them through a field of camas root, the plowed rows going on and on for miles. Working the rows were children hunched over, digging out roots, and tossing the dull bulbs hacked from the earth into their wheelbarrows. Children pushed the wheelbarrows to large wagons and dumped the roots. Back and forth they went, bent in the scorching sun. As Annie’s wagon rolled by, a pale-haired boy stumbled and the camas root bulbs spilled onto the dirt path. A horseman charged the boy, and the horse knocked the boy to the ground. He lay in the path and bled where the hooves ripped open his back. As he lay bleeding, the man jumped from the horse. The horseman didn’t stop kicking and the boy lay quiet.

Annie’s wagon turned and followed the ruts back to Evalsne. No one spoke as their eyes avoided each other. The wagon creaked along with the driver snapping the reins in the sun.

That night the dreams began.

A small child grabbed Annie’s ankle and begged her for help. Annie didn’t remember the girl, but the dream returned night after night.

“What’s wrong child?” Annie’s mother asked as she held her daughter. “Are you having nightmares of people you saw in the factory?”

“We have to do something.”

“Oh, Annie. Poor Annie,” her mother said, and she tucked a strand of hair behind Annie’s ear. “My sweet child. You must understand.”

“But I don’t, Mother. I don’t.”

“You will though. It is too late for these workers. How could they live free? The breath of the air, the unknown choices they would need to make. Can you imagine the shock when they first saw an endless horizon? They would collapse in the dirt. They’d die raving in madness. It’s much kinder to leave them where they are.”

“We can’t ignore them. What of the suffering?”

“No, Annie child. We do not ignore them, but need them. By knowing their pain, we know what is good. Without knowing, without our understanding of pain, we would die. The poets, painters, sculptors, and artisans—where would inspiration come from if not with the understanding of pain?”

Days later, Annie saddled the mare. On the far side of Evalsne, she scanned the mountains and traced a path leading into a thin, pale pass.

Duncan stepped from the shadows and followed her eyes. “You’re leaving?” he asked. “Where will you go? This is all you know.”

Once more, Annie scanned the unknown path through the mountains as her hands tightened on the reins. Turning, she looked back to her home and then again to the high peaks. She stared a long time. At last, she heeled the mare toward the mountains. Dust rose behind her in the blistering heat.