“I told you this little patch of dirt here in front of us is where it all begins—human thought, human awareness of the sacred, and human history—but as many times as I’ve come back to it, I don’t think I’ve ever been completely forthright with you. I’ve been diffident. I haven’t spelled it out—because, I suppose, in spite of everything, I fear the sneering superiority of your kind.”
I didn’t want to ask what kind “my kind” is (and probably didn’t need to, either). Instead I made the mistake of asking her if she’d ever actually seen me sneering.
“Many times, I’m afraid. I know you’re not aware of it, and I know you try to suppress it, but I also know this isn’t easy for someone with your intellectual and cultural indoctrination.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, inadequately. “Profoundly.”
“I know it. Charles knew it too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
I pondered that for a while and finally said, “I guess if you want me to do what you say you want me to do, then you’re going to have to say the things you’re afraid to say.”
“You’re right, of course,” she said, “and I know it.”
“Say them to Louis, if that helps. In a way, it helps me too.”
“Okay, I’ll do that when I have to,” she said. “Meanwhile … An hour ago—I don’t know if you’ll remember it—I told you we became human reading the tale of events written here—here in the hand of the god. And I showed you my own hand, like this. Do you know what I meant by that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you see these marks in my hand?”
“Of course.”
“I’m comparing them to these marks.” She indicated the tracks of the beetle and the mouse. “Both sets of marks are tracks—marks left by the passage of life. It’s my notion—and of course it’s just a notion—that these tracks, found here in the hand and here on the ground, gave rise to the notion that we live in
the hand of the god of this place.”
She reached out and dragged her forefinger across the track of the beetle.
“Shirin’s mark,” she said. “Like the beetle and the mouse, once upon a time, I was here. And if another comes to study these marks, he or she will say, ‘All three were here, at different times, all held in the hand of the god—and all still held in the hand of the god though they’re no longer right here.’ Every track begins and ends in the hand of god, and every track is a lifetime long. Hunter and hunted are both standing in their tracks when they meet, and there are no tracks, however far-flung, that fall outside the hand of god. All paths lie together like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle’s or the mouse’s. All are held together.
“These are things I’d like to say to Louis. We make our journey in the company of others. The deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind us. All our paths lie together in the hand of god and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey across the hand of god as surely as you are.
“Remember that your tracks are one strand of the web woven endlessly in the hand of god. They’re tied to those of the mouse in the field, the eagle on the mountain, the crab in its hold, the lizard beneath its rock. The leaf that falls to the ground a thousand miles away touches your life. The impress of your foot in the soil is felt through a thousand generations.”
In the sea of grass
“I’m at the end of my strength for now, Jared, but I want to take one more field trip before we call it a day. This will be a mental one, so you won’t have to put on your Natty Bumppo hat. Where did you grow up?” I told her Ohio. “I’ve never been there, but it can’t be entirely different from where I grew up, out in the Great Plains. It’s not all cornfields, even today. I want you to travel with me to a place I remember as a child, a plains wilderness…. Once when I was a kid I remember watching an old western movie on TV called The Sea of Grass. I don’t know what it was about. All I remember is one scene where Spencer Tracy looks out over this vast sea of grass stretching from horizon to horizon, and the wind’s stirring it up and sending it into waves just like the sea. The place I’m talking about wasn’t as huge as that, but it was the same kind of place. Close your eyes and see if you can picture such a place.
“The important thing to realize is that this isn’t grass, Jared. This is deer and bison and sheep and cicadas and moles and rabbits. Reach down and grab a handful. Go ahead—at least mentally. Have you got it? That’s a mouse. And the mouse, the ox, the gazelle, the goat, and the beetle all burn with the fire of grass, Jared. Grass is their mother and father, and their young are grass.
“One thing: grass and grasshopper. One thing: grasshopper and sparrow. One thing: sparrow and fox. One thing: fox and vulture. One thing, Jared, and its name is fire, burning today as a stalk in the field, tomorrow as a rabbit in its burrow, and the next day as an eleven-year-old girl named Shirin.
“The vulture is fox; the fox, grasshopper; the grasshopper, rabbit; the rabbit, girl; the girl, grass. All together, we’re the life of this place, indistinguishable from one another, intermingling in the flow of fire, and the fire is god—not God with a capital G, but rather one of the gods with a little g. Not the creator of the universe but the animator of this single place. To each of us is given its moment in the blaze, Jared, its spark to be surrendered to another when it’s sent, so that the blaze may go on. None may deny its spark to the general blaze and live forever—not any at all. Certainly not me, for all my giant intellect. Each—each!—is sent to another someday. You are sent, Jared—Louis. You’re on your way, both of you. I too am sent. To the wolf or the cougar or the vulture or the beetles or the grasses, I am sent. I’m sent and I thank you all, grasses in all your forms—fire in all your forms—sparrows and rabbits and mosquitoes and butterflies and salmon and rattlesnakes, for sharing yourselves with me for this time, and I’m bringing it all back, every last atom, paid in full, and I appreciate the loan.
“My death will be the life of another, Jared—I swear that to you. And you watch, you come find me, because I’ll be standing again in these grasses and you’ll see me looking through the eyes of the fox and taking the air with the eagle and running in the track of the deer.”
The secrets
“These are our secret teachings, Jared. I know Charles told you that secret teachings are ones that teachers have a hard time giving away. Do you see now why this is so?”
“Yes.”
“The Leaver peoples of the world have been trying to tell you these things for centuries, but they still remain secrets. Certainly we haven’t hidden them—far from it. We’re not like high-degree members of the Freemasons or the Templars or the Ku Klux Klan, whispering secrets in locked rooms and exacting promises of silence from those who hear them. Wherever people behave that way, you can be sure they’re guarding either very paltry secrets or simple matters of fact, like where the Allies planned to invade Europe at the end of World War Two. Real secrets can be kept by publishing them on billboards.”
By this time we were walking back to the car.
B said, “When we began this process, you offered this as the Taker vision: The world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it. Have I given you enough to articulate the Leaver, or animist, vision?”