Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“Whoa. Hang on, big fella. I told you a long time ago. I’m not like that.”

“Neither am I,” Daniel said.

“Hey. It’s fine. It’s a free country.” Mark fell silent, but calm. “But tell me something. You know all that avian crap. Can you train one of those birds to spy on someone?”

Daniel weighed his words. “Birds will surprise you. Blue jays can lie. Ravens punish social cheaters. Crows fashion hooks out of straight wire and use them to lift cups out of holes. Not even chimps can do that.”

“So following people would be no problem.”

“Well, I’m not sure how you’d get them to report back to you.”

“Dude. That’s the easy part. Technology. Little wireless cameras and such.”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “Not my strong suit. I’ve never been good at telling the possible from the impossible. That’s why I ended up in preservation.”

“The point is, they’re not just — you know — bird brains?”

Daniel held still at the sound, the ten-year-old Mark, the love of his boyhood who’d always deferred to Daniel’s bookish authority. They’d fallen back by instinct into the forgotten cadence. “It turns out that their brains are much more powerful than people ever thought. Much more cortex, just shaped differently from ours, so we couldn’t see it. They can think, no question about it. See patterns. People have trained pigeons to tell Seurats from Monets.”

“Gortex? Tell who from what?”

“The details aren’t important. Why do you ask?”

“I had this idea, a few months back. I thought…you might be following me around. You and your birds. But that’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Daniel said. “I’ve heard crazier.”

“Now I realize that if anyone’s following me, it’s the other side. These Nature Outpost people. And it’s not really me they’re after. Nobody gives a flying fart whether I live or die. They probably just want my real estate.”

“I’d love to talk to you about this,” Daniel said. Using a delusion to chase a delusion.

“Ah, man. Maybe I’m just scrambled. You have no idea what I’ve been through. A fuck of an accident, one year ago this month. It all started then.”

“I know,” Daniel told him.

“You saw the show?”

“Show? No. I saw you.”

“Saw me? When was this? Don’t jerk me around, Danny. I’m warning you.”

Daniel explained: in the hospital. Early on. While Mark was still coming back.

“You came to see me? Why?”

“I was worried about you.” All true.

“You saw me? And I didn’t see you?”

“You were still in pretty bad shape. You saw me, but…I scared you. You thought I was…I don’t know what you thought.”

Mark took off, fragments of words scattering like pheasants from a gunshot. He knew who he’d thought Daniel was. Someone else had come to see him in the hospital. Someone who left a note. Someone who’d been out there that night, on North Line. “You didn’t see the TV show? Television , man. You had to see it.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have a set.”

“Jesus. I forgot. You live in the freaking animal kingdom. Never mind; it doesn’t matter. If I could just get a look at what you look like now. Maybe it would come back to me. Who I thought you were. What this finder looks like.”

“I’d love that. I’d…like that. Maybe if I came by sometime…?”

“Now,” Mark said. “You know where I live? What am I saying? The Crane Refuge probably wants to liberate my house, too.”

Daniel knocked, and the prefab door opened on someone he might have passed on the street without identifying. Mark’s hair was flowing and tangled, as he’d never worn it. He’d put on twenty pounds in the last few months, and the weight surprised Mark’s small frame as much as it surprised Daniel. Strangest of all was his face, manned by some pilot baffled by the controls. Foreign thoughts now moved those muscles. The face stared out at Daniel on the icy February threshold. “Nature Boy,” Mark said, a little skeptical. Trying to put his finger on a vast difference. At last, he figured it. “You got old.”

He dragged Daniel inside and stood him in the center of the living room, inspecting. Brine spilled out of the corners of his eyes. Yet his face remained studious, like a shopper examining the ingredients on a strange brand’s label. Daniel stood still, shaking. After a long time, Mark shook his head. “Nothing. I’m not getting anything.”

Daniel’s face curdled, until he realized. Mark didn’t mean fifteen years ago; he meant ten months.

“It never comes back, does it?” Mark said. “Shit’s never what it was. Probably wasn’t what it was, even back when it was it.” He laughed, cotton wrapped in barbed wire. “Doesn’t matter. You were Nature Boy once, and that’s good enough for me. Pleasure to meet you, Nature Man.” He threw his arms around Daniel, like tying a horse’s reins to a hitching post. The hug was over before Daniel could return it. “Sorry about the historical bullcrap, dude. A lot of wasted time and anxiety, and now I can’t even remember what the big deal was. So I didn’t want your hand working my front privates. That doesn’t mean I had to beat you to a bloody pulp.”

“No,” Daniel said. “It was me. All me.”

“Man, getting old is nothing but accumulating stupid shit we have to apologize for. What are we going to be like when we’re seventy?” Daniel tried to reply, but Mark didn’t really want an answer. He reached into the pocket of his corduroy overshirt and pulled out a piece of laminated paper full of chicken scratch. “Here’s the deal. Does this mean anything to you?”

“Your…Karin Two told me about it.”

Mark grabbed his wrist. “She doesn’t know you’re here, does she?”

Daniel shook his head.

“Maybe she’s okay. You never know. So you’re saying you’re not my guardian angel? No idea who? Well, whatever happened back in the hospital, you aren’t reminding me of anybody, now. Except a big, crusty, old version of Nature Boy. So what can I get you to drink? Some kind of wetlands whole-grain tea?”

“You have any beer?”

“Whoa. Little Danny R. comes of age.”

They sat at the round vinyl dinette table, jittery with reunion. They did not know, yet, how to be anything but boys together. Daniel asked Mark to describe the surveyors. They sounded only slightly more solid than his guardian angel. Mark asked about the development, which, in Daniel’s recounting, sounded like paranoid invention.

“I don’t get it. You’re saying this fight is all about water ?”

“Nothing else is more worth fighting over.”

The idea dazed Mark. “Water wars?”

“Water wars here, oil wars overseas.”

“Oil? This new one? Man, what about revenge? Security? Religious showdown, and such?”

“Beliefs chase resources.”

They talked and drank, Riegel exceeding his last two years’ consumption. He was prepared to pass into unconsciousness, if need be, to stay with Mark.

Mark was flush with ideas. “You want to know how to steal this land right out from underneath these jokers? Danny, Danny. Let me show you something.” With the closest thing to energy he’d shown, Mark stood and clomped into his bedroom. Daniel heard him moving things around, sounding like a backhoe in a trash dump. He returned triumphant, waving a book above his head. He held it up to Daniel: Flat Water . “Local history textbook from my first year in college. My last year in college, I should say.” Mark flipped through the pages in a state almost like excitement. “Hold your horses. It’s here, somewhere. Mr. Andy Jackson, if I’m not mistaken. Weird about the ancient past: how it keeps coming up. Here. Indian Removal Act, 1830. The Intercourse Act, 1834. Don’t get excited; it’s not as interesting as it sounds. All the lands west of the Mississippi that aren’t already Missouri, Louisiana, or Arkansas. May I quote? ‘Forever secure and guarantee.’ ‘Heirs or successors.’ ‘In perpetuity.’ That means forever. We’re talking a long time, buster. The fucking law of the land . And they say I’m delusional? This whole country’s delusional! There’s not a white person out here who’s a legal property owner, including me. That’s how you should handle this. Get your lawyers, get a few natives down from the rez on your side: you should be able to clear out the whole state. Get it back how it was.”