Hello from Maryland. As if cued by Daylight Savings Time, spring is here. The crocuses and star magnolias and daffodils are blooming. Today will reach 70° F (21° C). My cross-country skis (which I was able to use once this winter for the first time in five years) slump dejected in the corner. Sure, spring is fine and all, but I do mourn snow.
Today is a short piece I wrote during MFA residency, one of several experimental prologues for my clifi novel, set in the Marcellus shale region of northeastern Pennsylvania, just as methane fracking begins to boom. The novel became a sprawling monster with four POV characters, too many plot threads—all the usual rookie stuff. I will return to it, but meanwhile, I’ve been crafting short stories from the copious material I cut to finish my thesis. The piece that featured in last month’s Talking Back to Walden is the one such scene. March’s Talking Back is in the stewpot. Subscribe to receive it in your inbox.
I will begin to serialize these stories in April. Meanwhile, enjoy this snippet.
We’ve been warned about descending to the Underworld. We’ve been warned to have a worthy purpose. To have a reliable guide. A return plan. We’ve been warned to make offerings.
The Drillers do not descend to slay monsters or avenge wrongs or seek counsel from a lost shipmate or a dead father. The Drillers do not descend to retrieve a love stolen by the Lord of Death himself. The Drillers drill for treasure. Their ignorance and hubris make them clueless of the rules. The Drillers are not aware that something precious must be sacrificed.
The Underworld is eternal. The Drillers are human. Humans are bound by time.
Time-travel now to watch settler surveyors lay out new sites named for men: Pottsville, Danville, Sunbury, Lewistown. Look over the shoulders of William Penn’s sons as they swindle the Lenape and Susquehannock off their land.
Travel another thousand years back. See the towns along the wide Susquehanna with names like Wyoming, Tunkhannock, and Occohpocheny. Names that future linguists will translate to Extensive Meadows, Small Stream, and Hickory Tree Place.
Travel ten thousand years back. The Woodland People share and trade maize, corn, and squash for fish from the Dawn Land. They quarry jasper, quartz, and flint to make tools and jewelry.
Travel down now, through geologic layers. Travel through the five-hundred-years-old topsoil riding a layer of sandstone, jasper, and quartz that sequesters a ribbon of freshwater in its hidden flow to the river.
Travel down through fifteen-thousand-years-old siltstone.
Travel down through seventy-million-years-old Mesozoic shale of the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods.
Arrive at the three-hundred-ninety-million-years-old Paleozoic-era black shale. The Marcellus shale from the middle Devonian epoch, sequestered nine thousand feet beneath the Drillers’ boots.
When the Drillers drill, monsters in muds from another millennium shoot up the shaft. Bacteria from ancient sea beds hitch rides with bentonite with uranium with radium. The Drillers gather the spoils and truck the truckloads of spoils one state over and dump the spoils into a sprawling pit dug into Lenape land.
The Underworld is eternal. The Drillers are humans. Humans are bound by time.
Time is not on the side of the Drillers. The climate warms with every more molecule of methane released off their site in Pennsylvania. With every more site like theirs and the thousands and tens of thousands of sites in the region. With every more site like those and the hundreds of thousands of other sites around the globe.
The Drilling crew in Pennsylvania is led by a Foreman. The Foreman’s Great-Granddaughter, yet to be born, waits in a galactic green room. She waits for him to wake up. When the Foreman clocks in, he is not awake. His car needs new tires. His mortgage is due. His only son is hooked on painkillers from a long-healed knee injury. Anti-Drilling Activists threaten his job.
The Foreman gazes out his grimy kitchen window. He watches the rising sun scatter gold across the misty fields beyond his site and he draws a breath.
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"The Drillers are not aware that something precious must be sacrificed." Oh, this rings true. This piece is so good, Julie. And I love that last line. I drew a breath, too, and cast my eyes to the field lit by gold light out my window this morning.
It is vast, grand and authoritative arriving at the uneasy specificity of that great granddaughter waiting her turn in the cosmic green room.
She is not going to be pleased and this is not going to end happily.
Cue Daniel Day Lewis walking out to his pickup.