The Big Lie

It’s been said that writing fiction is lying to tell the truth.  In order to say what I wanted to say, I’ve had to tell big lies.  That’s the nature of this novel, the nature of magical realism. Something true lies beneath the lie.  This is the opening chapter to the book.

The Raven

The raven rode the uplift past the face of the granite dome, rose above the world and began to turn slow meandering circles above the Sierra ridge as she croaked her message into the wind.  To the east the raven could see the world was still locked in snow and ice.  Thousands of feet below where she circled the raven could make out a movement by the river.  Maybe the figure far below was who she was looking for.  The raven pulled out of the uplift and began a descent toward the river.

The old man emerged from a pool at the edge of the river where he had carefully stayed away from the fast current in the middle.  The water was snowmelt cold, but his body had adapted after all the many years of daily ritual.  Cleanliness was next to godliness.  He wasn’t obsessive, but he had to daily wash away his memories of the red dust world below the mountains in order to stay alive.  Too many memories, ancient memories.   He heard the distant cry of the raven carried on the wind and looked up, nodded in her direction in a slight bow.  Something or someone important would be coming.

Off to his left another old man stirred where he lay on a narrow strand of stark white sand cupped in the hollow of a granite slab that tilted gently toward the river.  The slab was a confection of shades of reds and rusts with great intrusions of black shot through.  Grey/white boulders that had swept down from the higher elevations during high water snowmelt years gathered in pockets along the river where they had been trapped as the water receded.  The old men had sometimes sat up all the night during these runoffs, the mountains dark around them under the stars, and had listened to the boulders growling and crashing against each other in the riverbed and watched as the sparks flew underwater as rock struck rock like flint on steel.  The river illuminated itself.

Though her message was delivered, the raven flew lower and watched. The two men were obviously different.  The one emerging from the river was Asian, more slightly built than the man lying on the sand.  The man on the sand was darker and rounder, his skin a deep reddish-brown.  He too looked up toward the raven and smiled, then greeted his friend emerging from the river.  Up canyon, snowcapped Alta Peak jutted above the more immediate tree covered ridges.  This terrain had had been home for a very long time, broken by forays to the great valley below.

Slightly upriver from the men, the raven silently glided toward a dying pine that protruded above the surrounding trees and settled out over a dead branch, then extended its claws.  It was still winter in the low mountains, yet some trees were starting to sprout new growth.  The raven studied the men’s actions, tried to understand what they might need for their ongoing existence.  After an hour the raven took flight, satisfied with her observations.

            The raven ascended a few hundred feet as she flew upriver, then curved behind a crumbling granite ridge, her mission complete.  The Great Mind had watched through the raven’s eyes and now dwelled on the information.  The raven flew on, homeward bound.

            Upstream in time the fabric shifted, made accommodation.