Surfacing

I include a copy of one of my recent studies which you may find of interest.

Yours sincerely.

The letter had an illegible signature and a university crest. Paperclipped to it were half a dozen xeroxed sheets: _Rock Paintings of the Central Shield, by Dr. Robin M. Grove._ The first few pages were maps and graphs and statistics; I skimmed them quickly. At the end of the article there were three short paragraphs, subtitled _Aesthetic Qualities and Possible Significance.

The subject matter falls into the following categories: Hands, Abstract Symbols, Humans, Animals and Mythological Creatures. In treatment they are reminiscent, with their elongated limbs and extreme distortion, of the drawings of children. The static rigidity is in marked contrast to the rock paintings of other cultures, most notably the European cave paintings.

From the above features we may deduce that the creators of the paintings were interested exclusively in symbolic content, at the expense of expressiveness and form. However we can only indulge in conjecture as to the nature of this content, since no historical records exist. Informants questioned have supplied conflicting traditions. Some state that the sites of the paintings are the abodes of powerful or protective spirits, which may explain the custom, persisting in remote areas, of leaving offerings of clothing and small bundles of "prayer" sticks. One gives more credence to the theory that the paintings are associated with the practice of fasting to produce significant or predictive dreams.

Doubtful also is the technique employed. The paintings seem to have been executed either with the fingers or with a crude brush of some sort. The predominant colour is red, with minor occurrences of white and yellow; this may be due either to the fact that red among the Indians is a sacred colour or to the relative availability of iron oxides. The bonding agent is being investigated; it may prove to be bears' fat or birds' eggs, or perhaps blood or spittle._

The academic prose breathed reason; my hypotheses crumbled like sand. This was the solution, the explanation: he never failed to explain.

His drawings were not originals then, only copies. He must have been doing them as a sort of retirement hobby, he was an incurable amateur and enthusiast: if he'd become hooked on these rock paintings he would have combed the area for them, collecting them with his camera, pestering the experts by letter whenever he found one; an old man's delusion of usefulness.

I pressed my fingers into my eyes, hard, to make the pool of blackness ringed with violent colour. Release, red spreading back in, abrupt as pain. The secret had come clear, it had never been a secret, I'd made it one, that was easier. My eyes came open, I began to arrange.

I thought, I suppose I knew it from the begi

I was staring down at the drawings, they were framed by my two arms lain parallel on the table. I began to notice them again. There was a gap, something not accounted for, something left over.

I spread the first six pages out on the table and studied them, using what they called my intelligence, it shortcircuits those other things. The notes and numbers were apparently a location code, it was like a puzzle he'd left for me to solve, an arithmetic problem; he taught us arithmetic, our mother taught us to read and write. Geometry, the first thing I learned was how to draw flowers with compasses, they were like acid patterns. Once they thought you could see God that way but all I saw was landscapes and geometrical shapes; which would be the same thing if you believed God was a mountain or a circle. He said Jesus was a historical figure and God was a superstition, and a superstition was a thing that didn't exist. If you tell your children God doesn't exist they will be forced to believe you are the god, but what happens when they find out you are human after all, you have to grow old and die? Resurrection is like plants, Jesus Christ is risen today they sang at Sunday School, celebrating the daffodils; but people are not onions, as he so reasonably pointed out, they stay under.

The numbers were a system, a game; I would play it with him, it would make him seem less dead. I lined up the pages and compared the notes, carefully as a jeweller.

On one of the drawings, another antlered figure, I finally spotted the key: a name I recognized, White Birch Lake where we went bass fishing, it was co

I wanted to go there and verify, match the drawing with reality; that way I'd be sure I'd followed the rules and done it right. I could disguise it as a fishing trip, David hadn't caught anything since his first attempt, though he'd been trying. We'd have time to go there and get back with two days to spare.

I heard A

"Hi," she said, "do I look burnt?"

She was pink now, parboiled, white showing around the orange edges of her suit, neck dividing body colour from applied face colour. "A little," I said.

"Listen," she said, her voice shifting into concern, "what's wrong with Joe? I was down on the dock with him and he didn't say one word."

"He doesn't talk much," I said.

"I know, but this was different. He was just lying there." She was pushing, demanding answers.

"He thinks we should get married," I said. Her eyebrows lifted like ante

"I don't want to."

"Oh," she said, "then that's awful. You must feel awful." She'd found out; now she was rubbing after-sun lotion on her shoulders. "Mind?" she said, handing me the plastic tube.

I didn't feel awful; I realized I didn't feel much of anything, I hadn't for a long time. Perhaps I'd been like that all my life, just as some babies are born deaf or without a sense of touch; but if that was true I wouldn't have noticed the absence. At some point my neck must have closed over, pond freezing or a wound, shutting me into my head; since then everything had been glancing off me, it was like being in a vase, or the village where I could see them but not hear them because I couldn't understand what was being said. Bottles distort for the observer too: frogs in the jam jar stretched wide, to them watching I must have appeared grotesque.

"Thanks," A

"I have," I said; but her eyes were accusing, I hadn't done enough, conciliation, expiation. I went obediently towards the door.

"Maybe you can work it out," she called after me. Joe was still on the dock but he was sitting on the edge now with his feet in the water, I crouched down beside him. His toes had dark hairs on the tops, spaced like the needles on a balsam twig.