Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

Until the age of thirteen, her brother and Daniel had been joined at the hip, twin nature boys turning up ornate box turtles, stumbling on bobwhite nests, camped outside burrows that they dreamed of inhabiting. Then, in high school, something happened. Sometime during sophomore year, from one class period to the next, they fell out. Long, protracted war, with a static front. Danny stayed with the animals and Mark abandoned them for people. “Growing up,” Mark explained, as if love of nature were an adolescent fixation. He never had anything to do with Daniel again. Years later, when Karin started dabbling with Daniel herself, neither boy ever mentioned the other to her.

She and Daniel spun out, almost as soon as they’d started. She ran off to Chicago, then on to Los Angeles, before crawling home, humbled. Daniel, untiring idealist, welcomed her back without questions. Only when he overheard her mimicking him in whispers on the phone to Karsh did Daniel kick her out. She fled to her brother for support. But when Mark, loyal to her, started bad-mouthing Daniel, hinting at dark secrets in the past, Karin turned on him so harshly they didn’t speak for weeks.

Now Daniel’s voice reassured her: she was better than her past. He’d always said as much, and now life had dealt her a challenge that would prove him right. Daniel’s tone threatened to convince her. Human stupidity meant nothing, least of all what humans thought it meant. You could brush it away like a wisp of insect silk grazing your face. Unintended cruelties didn’t matter. All that mattered now was her brother. Daniel asked about Mark’s care, good questions she should have asked the therapists long before. She listened to him as if to a forgotten favorite song, one that distilled a whole chapter of life into three minutes. “I’d be happy to come to the hospital,” he said.

“Well, he’s not making much of anyone, just yet.” Something in her didn’t want him seeing Mark as he was now. What she wanted from Daniel was stories, stories of Mark, before. Things she wasn’t sure she was remembering right, after too many days at bedside.

She did remember to ask Daniel about his own life. The distraction helped, even if she couldn’t focus on the details. “How are things at the Sanctuary?”

He had quit the Sanctuary in despair at their compromises. He now worked for the Buffalo County Crane Refuge, a smaller, more limber and confrontational group. Work at the Sanctuary had been steady and well-intentioned, but far too accommodating. The Refuge was harder-line. “If you want to save something that’s been around for millions of years, you can’t be moderate.”

How contemptible she’d been, ever to take this man lightly. His gentle firmness was worth ten of her and Karsh put together. She couldn’t believe that he would still talk to her. The accident permitted that, too. Made everyone briefly better than they were. Put the present above the past. She’d been circling in a snowstorm, frostbitten and near collapse, and she’d stumbled on a lean-to with a fire. She wanted this conversation to go on, slowly meandering nowhere. For the first time since the hospital’s call, she felt she could do whatever disaster required. If she could just call this man from time to time.

Daniel asked about her life before the wreck. He asked in a soft aside, as if lying motionless in a field, looking through binoculars. “I’ve been managing,” she told him. “Learning a lot about myself. It turns out I have some skill, working with upset people.” She described all the responsibilities she’d had, in the job she’d just lost. “They say they might be able to hire me back, when this is all over.”

“Have you been seeing anyone?”

She started to giggle again. Something was truly wrong with her. Something skidding out of control. “Only my brother. Nine or ten hours a day.” Even telling him that much terrified her. But how infinitely better it was to be terrified than dead. “Daniel? It would be really good if we could sit for a minute. If you have the time to see me. I don’t want to burden you. This is…a handful, is all. I know I’m the last person with any right to ask you…But I don’t quite know how to do this by myself.”

Long after they hung up, she heard him saying, “Of course. I would like that. Too.”

She could learn, she told herself, falling asleep. Learn how not to be her knee-jerk, self-protecting self. The time for constantly rebuffing imagined slights was over. The accident changed everything, gave her a chance to undo all her old hit-and-runs. The last few weeks had emptied her — just having to look at Mark laid bare. How easy now, to float above herself, gaze down on all the killing needs that controlled her, and see them for the phantoms they were. Nothing had the power to hurt her except for what power she gave it. Every barrier she’d ever chafed against was no more than a Chinese finger lock that opened instantly when she stopped pulling. She could simply watch, learn about the new Mark, listen to Daniel without having to understand him. Other people were about themselves, not about her. Everyone alive was at least as scared as she was. Remember that, and a person might come to love anyone.

Echo caca. Cocky locky. Caca lala.Living things, always talking. How you know they’re living. Always with the look , with the listen , with the see what I mean . What can things mean, that they aren’t already? Live things make such sounds, just to say what silence says better. Dead things are what they are already, and can shut up in peace.

Humans the worst. All over him with their words. Worse than cicadas on a warm night. Or all frog, more or legs. Listen to the spurts. Listen to those birds. But birds might be louder. His mother told him. The less the thing, the louder the ring. Take the wind: all that noise, just going nowhere from nothing for no reason, and there’s no thing on earth less than the wind.

Someone says he’s missing the birds. How can that be? The birds are always coming. How can he miss them, when they aren’t even missing? Animals must be more like rocks. Saying only what they are. A longer now, a shorter then, living in the place he’s just come from.

He knew what that place is, but now it’s just saying.

They make him say a lot, humans. They take him out spinning, and it’s murder. Hell in a hall, bumper to bumper, worse than freeways, people flying all ways too fast to miss. And still they want talk, even while moving. Like talk isn’t crazy enough. But once they work him, they let him lie. Sleeping old dogs, up to new tricks. This he loves: when they give him his body back, and no need. Loves just lying still in the world buzz, all channels at once pouring through his skin.

He has to work some, with time come back. Up and attic, there and bath again. Have him living in a boxcar now. Old train with others orphaned like him. He’s lived in worse. Not easy to say just where he is. So he says nothing. Some things say him. What’s on his mind hops off. Thoughts come out, not thoughts he knew he had. No one always knows what he means. This can’t bother him. He doesn’t really, either.

A girl comes by he’d like to do. Maybe already did. That would make it good, though. Could go. Do each other, always. Encore. One car, for the two of them, doing it. Those birds mate for good, after all. The birds he’s missing. Who are humans, to do better? Pair forever. Teach their kids to reach the top of the earth and find their way back, the way-back way he found.

Those birds are smart. His father always told him. A dad who knew those birds so well he used to kill them.

Something killing him to remember, just now, but it goes.