Where the Sea Used to Be (52 page)

The ova of two animals
—
say the elephant and the rhinoceros
—
are both simple nucleated cells. To the unaided eye, no difference is discoverable. Subject them to chemical analysis, and they are found composed of the same elements combined in the same way. Treat them with reagents and put them under the compound microscope, and nothing is seen in one which does not appear in the other. Materially they are the same. But one develops,
out of itself,
the embryo of an elephant, and the other,
out of itself,
the embryo of a rhinoceros.

On these two different embryonic foundations the two different animals in their completeness are built up. With no difference in the matter, there nonetheless existed in the two germs a profound difference in nature and destiny. Beyond anything scrutable existed something inscrutable. That which was not matter gave to matter a destination from which it could not swerve.

A human organism with all its parts perfect and all its parts in harmonious action is a splendid mechanism which can never cease to awaken
admiration and wonder. But while we contemplate it alas, its activities cease. A powerful current of electricity has passed through the frame, and life is extinct. The change which we witness is appalling. The eye has lost its light; the voice gives forth no more intelligence; the muscles cease to grasp the implement; the fabric of a man now lies prone, motionless, speechless, insensible,
dead—
a stupendous and total change. But what is changed? Not the mechanism. The heart is still in its place, with all its valves; the brain shows no lesion; the muscles are all ready to act. Every part remains as it was in life. Neither chemistry nor the microscope detects, as yet, a material change. But something has gone out of the mechanism, for it is not as it was—something inscrutable, but yet something which ruled the mechanism—sustaining its action, lighting the eye, giving information to the tongue, making of this machinery absolutely all that which led us to say,
“Here is a man.” The man has gone out and left only his silent workshop behind.

Consider the life powers in action. The organism is in process of growth. A common fund of assimilative material is provided by the digestive organs. Out of this, atom by atom is selected and built into the various tissue fabrics. Here such atoms are selected as the formation of bone requires; there, the atoms suited for nerve or brain structure; in another place, the material of which muscles are made. Nice selection of material is indispensable.

Then notice the building of the bones. In one place the framework is so laid that the filling up will result in a flat bone. It is to be a shoulder blade, or a portion of the skull. In another place the framework is elongated; it is to be a long bone. Every bone is constructed for its place and its function. The whole system of bones, moreover, is conformed to a definite fundamental plan of structure—it is according to the plan of a vertebrate.

Selection of appropriate material is an act of intelligence. The determination of one form of structure rather than another implies discriminating intelligence and executive will! The conformation of the total system to an ideal plan implies first a conception of the plan. Certainly, we must say that here
mind
is at work. But is it the mind of the animal or plant? Every person can answer for himself whether he made his own bones. The question is absurd. Is the mind evinced possessed by the matter? Do these atoms and molecules move and arrange themselves by an intelligence and choice of their own? Do they intelligently maintain
the processes of digestion, blood purification, assimilation, and tissue building? How do they conceive, think, and will without brain? How select without eyes or hands? But, it is conceivable, you say.

There is intelligence acting in the organism, which does not belong to the matter or the individual; whose intelligence is it? Intelligence is an attribute; it belongs to being; it does not act abstracted from being. What being then, acts in the living organism?

You say you will admit that the earth exerts an active power through a medium. What ground have you to claim that any active power is possessed by the earth? Have you ever known a stone or a stick or a chunk of ice to exert any active agency—except this hypothetical agency of attraction? You
think
you have often seen matter put forth activities of its own; but really you have only seen activities exerted in connection with matter
—
just as you observe selection and choice in the working organism. Now in reality, all you know about the origin of efficient power is given you in your own consciousness when you exert power; and what you infer from analogy when power seems to be exerted by other persons. That is, you only know that efficiency originates in
will—
your own will; and when you see efficiency exerted anywhere, you can only affirm that
some will is acting.

Now, are you prepared to ascribe such will to the earth, to stones and mud and chunks of ice, when the so-called attraction seems to be exerted by them? This is the same question which has settled itself in the negative. The downward pull on the apple comes, then, from some other source. This is the other alternative. It means that power is exerted on the apple, and on all things, causing them to tend together in a certain fashion which we call the law of gravitation. Now, power is an attribute. It belongs to something; as it proceeds from will, power and will together are attributes of being. Manifestly, that being is omnipresent, for attraction is omnipresent. It is the Omnipresent Being. We can achieve this power.

Glance next at the prevalence of patterns and plans in the world. There is the plan of vertebrate structure; I have often made mention of it. In the modification of the plan for beings so diverse, it is wonderful that a simple conception should persist through all the ages of vertebrate history. It is an imperishable thought. The Articulates present us another plan persistent for even a longer period. The earth grew and attained completeness according to a method.

Out of the infinite storehouse of possible plans under which the Su
preme Power might have proceeded in the origination of things, he has chosen the method which we call evolution. This is a divine choice. This sets forth a divine and eternal thought. This embraces the world, the heavens, the universe, and everywhere proclaims the Mind which instituted it. This great all-embracing, all-enduring fact inspires our souls with awe; it illuminates the dark realm of matter with the sunlight of a divine revelation.

Nonetheless, we are ourselves amazing, and massive—of utmost significance.

Be still! Do not say this doctrine displaces the doctrine of divine creation; for it proclaims a perpetual creation according to an intelligible, God-chosen method. Do not say that in recognizing the
“reign of law
”
we displace personal divine agency; for the first principle in an intelligent divine government must be order, regularity, uniformity.

Do not say on the other hand, that the ascription of world-regulating law to a personal Will is the delivery of the world to the government of caprice. Caprice results only from the absence of mind.

I must not claim your attention longer. Perhaps I have penned some sentences which might seem difficult; but I hope you will all treasure the truth in these sentences, and ponder over it; then, when a little older, you will be enraptured, as I have been, with the richness and depth and grandeur of the meaning which the divine hand has written in the rocks and in the stars. It is all there, only for us to take.

 

The babies of prey were born in the first week of June. The predators had had their babies early—the wolves and coyotes and even the owls birthing in April, and the bears, gentle omnivores for the most part, also crawling up out of the earth in April with their cubs—so that by June, when the rest of the world was born—the deer fawns, the elk and moose calves—the young predators would be ready and waiting for them. Only the caribou, giving birth on the highest, snowiest ridges, were safe; down below, it was carnage.

Mostly it was the deer fawns that paid the price. For a week or so the woods would echo with their bleats and squeals as the lions, bears, coyotes, and wolves pulled them down and ate them before they were even a day old. The scats of the predators littered the trails, and in those scats could be seen the telltale little black hooves, no larger than a thumbnail—the only thing indigestible about the fawns—and the fawns were to the young predators what the blossoms of color were to the winter-tired humans: a burst of energy that got them over a hump and kept them going.

 

It was Artie who discovered that Amy was pregnant. She had lost her taste for alcohol of any kind, for the time being, and now that the warmer weather had returned, it could be seen that she had gained some weight. Everyone else thought she was just looking a little heavier, but Artie understood and, when they were alone in the bar one afternoon, had the nerve to ask. He asked shyly, as if she herself might not yet be aware of her condition, and she smiled, relieved that her secret was over, and said that yes, she was in her sixth month.

Artie counted backward, started to ask “Who?” now that the initial breach of intimacy had occurred, but when he settled on New Year's, he raised his eyebrows but said nothing, unwilling to utter the name, and Amy nodded, with a strange mix of embarrassment and pride.

What she did not tell Artie, but told the women in the valley (telling it to them when Mel was not around), was what a miraculous conception it had been: that they had not been coupled, and that although they had both been undressed, Old Dudley had been standing a good six feet away from her when he had gone off. It was almost like a spray, she said, and only a little bit had gotten on her. He had gone off just looking at her, she said.

“Are you sure?” they asked.

“I'm certain,” she said. She lifted her shirt and let them feel her stomach.

It had been over a year since a baby had been born in the valley. The women smiled, then laughed. “I thought his seed was bad,” Charlie's wife, Linda, said.

A woman named Jeanette had had three husbands in her life. “Maybe it has turned good in his old age,” she said.

“Old pine trees start producing excessive seed crops in the last year or two before they die, or when they're injured,” Helen said. “It's nature's way.”

“We probably shouldn't tell Mel,” one woman said. “It'll just upset her.”

“She has to know sometime,” Helen said. “Does Old Dudley know?”

Amy shook her head, and her face fell. “And no way is he going to believe it,” she said.

“Not to worry,” said Linda. “They can do tests, and stuff like that, now.”

“Can you imagine,” said Jeanette. “You've got a little
heir
in there.”

Amy frowned, then started to cry. “I just want him to love me,” she said. The other women fell around her with support. Helen went outside to smoke a cigarette. “Good luck, honey,” she said, on her way out the door. She stood there in solitude for a long time, curious about the terror she felt—like a chasm opening below her—and she was mesmerized by both the beauty of the scene before her and the dread welling strangely within her, total and absolute.

She forced herself to stay calm. She finished her cigarette; coughed twice. A taste of blood—more than usual. Another little vessel rupturing in her throat. She massaged it lightly.

She went back into the bar to gather her sweater and say good-bye. She coughed once more, by accident, and sent a projectile of blood, a spray of it, across the room. The mist of it settled on the wall as if sprayed from an aerosol can of paint. The other women stared at her in horror, and then sorrow. Helen sneezed another spray across the room. Someone handed her a scarf, but then she leaned forward and vomited a bright red half-pint of blood into an empty beer mug.

They carried her across the street to her store. They took her upstairs, built a fire in the stove, and took turns sitting with her.

In the morning she was better. The little fissures and ruptures in her throat and lungs sealed off tenuously.

Linda helped her downstairs to open the store and start the day. Helen lit another cigarette. The road was open, but Helen chose not to go see a doctor. “I'm seventy-eight,” she told Linda. The blue smoke filling her lungs. “I hope it goes fast,” she said. “I would like to see my boy. And I would like to see that baby.”

Venus, still bright in the morning sky. “I hope it doesn't hurt,” she said.

 

The year's first lost tourists filtered in one weekend, in their bright clothing and their shiny rental cars. They usually came as young couples, just married or recently engaged. Something about the blank spot on the map drew them, made them want to see what was up in that corner of the world: as if that blank spot were the closest they could come to seeing into the future. They never came to backpack—the dense, brambly jungle was alien to their learned patterns of recreation. But they would stand and gaze at the rushing river and at the distant mountains for hours. Sometimes they would set up a tent by the side of the river a mile or two outside of town, and in the evenings after making a little fire on which to cook, they would extinguish their fire—blue smoke hissing as it filtered upward through the old cedars and green cottonwoods—and they would walk hand in hand down the road to town, where they would enter the bar shyly and spend the evening sipping beer or something stronger and listening to Artie's wonderful bullshit.