Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

They could have no real future, after the humiliations of their past. But they could make a better past than the one they’d mangled. Mark’s struggles engaged them. Their vicarious work, undoing old pettiness: measuring how far Mark had come, and how far he had to go.

Daniel brought Karin books from libraries as far away as Lincoln, accounts of brain damage, carefully selected to lift her hope. He copied articles, the latest neurological research, which he helped her decode. He called to check in, prompting her on what to ask the therapists. It felt like life again, letting him carry her for a while. Once, her gratitude so overwhelmed her that she couldn’t resist a rushed, deniable hug.

She began to see Daniel with new eyes. Some part of her had always dismissed him, a neo-hippie inclined to righteousness, a little too organically pure, hovering above the herd. Now she felt her long unfairness. He simply wanted people to be as selfless as they should be, humbled by the million supporting links that kept them alive, as generous with others as nature was with them. Why did he waste his time with her, after what she’d done to him? Because she asked him to. What could he possibly get from their new connection? Simply the chance to do things right, at last. Reduce, reuse, recycle, retrieve, redeem.

They took walks. She dragged him to Fondel’s Auction, the old Wednesday-night county-wide ritual. It felt like the guiltiest of heavens, being anywhere but the hospital. Daniel never bid on anything, but he approved of all secondhand resale: Keeps things out of the land-fill . For her part, she indulged her old childhood obsession with the ghosts of previous owners still hiding out in discarded things. She walked up and down the long folding tables, fingering every dented pan and frayed rug, inventing stories for how they’d gotten here. They bought a lamp together, its stem made out of a statue of the Buddha. How such a thing had ever come to Buffalo County or why it was abandoned there only the wildest invention could explain.

On their seventh outing, shopping in the vegetable section of the Sun Mart for an impromptu dinner, he called her K.S. for the first time in years. She’d always loved the nickname. It made her feel like someone else, a key team member in an efficient organization. You’ll make a difference somewhere , he told her, back before either of them had a clue how little difference the world allowed. A real contribution, K.S. I know it. Now, lifetimes later, choosing mushrooms, he slipped back into the name, as if no time had passed. “If anyone can bring him back, it’s you, K.S.” She might still make a difference, if only to her brother.

She invented destinations for them, errands they needed to run. One warming weekend, she suggested a walk down by the river. Almost by accident, they found themselves at the old Kilgore bridge. Neither of them hinted that the place meant anything. Ice still crusted the water’s edge. The last cranes were departing on the long run north to their summer breeding grounds. But she could still hear them, invisible overhead.

Daniel scooped up small pebbles and angled them into the river. “Our Platte. I do love this river. A mile wide and an inch deep.”

She nodded, grinning. “Too thick to drink and too thin to plow.” Grade school lessons, as familiar as the times tables. Under the skin, just from growing up here. “Some river, if you stand it on its side.”

“No place like it, huh?” His mouth hooked sideways, a look almost mocking, in anyone but Daniel.

She shoved him gently. “You know, growing up? I was convinced that Kearney was totally hot shit.” He winced. She’d forgotten; he hated when she swore. “The center of the continent. Mormon Trail, Oregon Trail, Transcontinental Railroad, Interstate 80?”

He nodded. “And a trillion birds passing through on the Central Flyway.”

“Exactly. Everything crossing, right through town. I figured it was just a matter of time before we became the next St. Louis.”

Daniel smiled, bowed his head, and stuck his hands in his navy pea coat. “Crossroads of the nation.”

Being together — just being — was easier than she dared believe. She hated the girlish waves of anticipation, almost obscene, given what had brought them back. She was trading on disaster, using her damaged brother to make things right with her own past. But she couldn’t help herself. Something was about to happen, a good thing she hadn’t engineered, somehow the result of Mark’s catastrophe. She and Daniel were edging toward new territory, quiet, stable, and maybe even guiltless, a place she’d never thought possible. A place that could only help Mark.

They walked halfway out across the bridge. The pinned pony trusses swayed beneath their feet. The Platte’s north channel slipped beneath them. Daniel pointed out dens and burrows, encroaching vegetation, slight changes in the riverbed that she couldn’t make out. “Lots of action today. Blue-winged teal, there. Pintail. The grebes are early this year, for some reason. Look there! Is that a phoebe? Who are you? Come back. I can’t see who you are!”

The old bridge shook and she slipped her arm under the sleeve of his coat. He stopped and appraised her: a shocking accidental. She looked down and saw her hand swinging his like some schoolchild’s. Valentine’s and Memorial Day rolled into one. He grazed the back of his fingers over the new copper penny of her hair. A naturalist’s experiment.

“Do you remember when I used to quiz you on the species?”

She held still under his hand. “Hated it. I was so pitiful.”

His hand lifted to point to a cottonwood, barely budding. Something sat in the branch, small, flecked with yellow, and as jittery as she felt. No name she knew. Names would only have obliterated the thing. The nameless bird opened its throat, and out came the wildest music. It sang senselessly, sure that she could follow. All around, answers sprang up — the cottonwood and the Platte, the March breeze and rabbits in the undergrowth, something downstream slapping the water in alarm, secrets and rumors, news and negotiation, all of interlocked life talking at once. The clicks and cries came from everywhere and ended nowhere, making no judgment and promising nothing, just multiplying one another, filling the air like the river its bed. Nothing at all was her, and for the first time since Mark’s accident, she felt free of herself, a release bordering on bliss. The bird sang on, inserting its own collapsed song inside all conversation. The timelessness of animals: the kinds of sounds her brother made, crawling out of his coma. This was where her brother now lived. This was the song she would have to learn, if she wanted to know Mark again.

Something trumpeted overhead, a last, late remnant of the mass now on their way to the Arctic. Daniel looked up, searching. Karin saw nothing except gray cirrus.

“Those birds are doomed,” Daniel said.

She grabbed his arm. “That was a whooper?”

“Whooper? Oh no. Sandhills. You’d know a whooper.”

“I didn’t think…But the whoopers are the ones…”

“The whoopers are already gone. Couple hundred left. They’re just ghosts. Have you ever seen one? They’re like…hallucinations. Dissolving as you look at them. No: the whoopers are over. But the sandhills are just now staring down the barrel.”

“The sandhills? You’re kidding. There must be thousands…”

“Half a million, give or take.”

“Whatever. You know me and numbers. I’ve never seen so many sandhills as I’ve seen this year.”

“That’s a symptom. The river’s being used up. Fifteen dams, irrigation for three states. Every drop used eight times before it reaches us. The flow is a quarter of what it was before development. The river slows; the trees and vegetation fill in. The trees spook the cranes. They need the flats — someplace to roost where nothing can sneak up on you.” He spun in a slow half-circle, eyes scouring. “This is their only safe stopover. No other spot in the center of the continent they can use. They’re brittle — a low annual recruitment rate. Any large habitat break will be the end. Remember, the whoopers used to be as plentiful as the sandhills. A few more years, and we can say goodbye to something that’s been around since the Eocene.”