Stardust
Ellie Plachinski, '16
Generally, we tell direction by the changing landscape. From the deciduous forests to the temperate ones, and that one time, the desert, the oldest, the ones who still call this place America guide us. Jonathon, a man with skin darker than the trees and wrinkles deeper than that of the bark, had once told me people found their way with something called a map, that a device smaller than my hand could tell a person how to get anywhere in the entire planet. Now, there’s nothing, and only those who have lived through the Great Change have any hope of navigating.
But it’s okay, because our group is, well, okay. Almost everyone who’s left is stuck on different land masses, and no one wants to pass through what Jonathon calls the Bering Strait, which is way up where there’s always snow and sun shines for months without setting. A lot of people don’t like learning from Jonathon and the others, because it reminds them that there’s a previous world none of us will ever know. A world where there’s billions (but I don’t know exactly what that is—Jonathon says I don’t have a brain for math) of people instead of the thousands that exist today.
There’s thirty-seven people in our group, Noah tells me. He has a brain for math; Jonathon and him spend hours talking about physics and the universe and the entirety of mathematics. I don’t even know what the first two really are about, but it’s okay. The old man spends just as much time talking about history and what people are thinking about (psychology? philosophy? I forget the word) and how they used to write stories about things like what we’re living. Jonathon tells me that Noah and I have lived almost the exact same amount of time, though we don’t measure that anymore, apparently. That’s why, he says, we spend so much time together, because it’s true. Noah and I go on the same scouting missions and talk with Jonathon for hours as we walk (Jonathon rides, because he’s old enough to get to use one of our few horses)… we always have. We work well together, so we’re grouped together.
“Ready to go, Banana?” Noah asks, using the stupid nickname Maisie gave him to call me. Because my name is Anna, and there’s a fruit that still exists somewhere warmer called a banana, and banana sounds like Anna… well, it’s fairly obvious from there. “Today it’s just you, me, and Jonathon.”
“Jonathon’s going? Isn’t it going to be…” I trail off, not wanting to offend Noah. But Jonathon is old, and most of these scouting trips aren’t very friendly to horses.
“There’s something he wants to see, that he thinks is here,” Noah explains, shrugging as he hands a rucksack to me. Because it takes a while, we bring food and supplies on each mission, prepared for trouble.
“Did he tell you what?” All I get in response is a pensive tip of the head, which makes Noah’s hair fall into his eyes. There’s sharp enough scissors left over that cutting hair isn’t a problem, it’s just that Noah doesn’t like to. It’s almost to the point of him needing to steal the animal leather I use to tie my hair back, but I don’t mind. His skin isn’t nearly as dark as Jonathon’s, but it’s tanner than mine, and his hair is a color dark enough that I only see it at night—black, Jonathon’s voice at the back of my head supplies. I have hair the color of the plains in the fall, and skin that’s more freckles than sun-tanned.
“Let’s get going, Anna,” Noah says eventually, and I sigh, slinging the rucksack over my shoulder. Slowly, the air has been smelling sweeter, because of the kinds of trees that jut out from the many rocks. I want to follow that smell, but I know it’s going to be Jonathon leading this trip.
The walk to the edge of camp is peaceful, and we spend the trip looking around, the silence content instead of awkward. There are children running around fires, meat being roasted, and fruits dried. There’s laughter and mothers exasperatedly calling after their children, and my sisters are playing with their friends. It’s chaotically calm, so different from the vast silence of the terrain ahead and behind us. It feels almost wrong, especially since Noah and I are usually at the front of the pack, and not in the middle of the usual chatter. We’re crashing in on these vast expanses of hills and valleys and rivers that just seem so… undisturbed. And then we go and disturb them. Jonathon tells me we used to be a lot worse, that cities destroyed sections of this landscape, so many that it was almost all gone.
Jonathon is already waiting for us, almost brimming with energy. He still stands with the same slumped shoulders as everyone who’s lived in the time before, but there’s a twinkle in his eyes that’s only there when Noah and I are doing a particularly good job learning. He starts off, going at a slow gait that has Noah and I so far ahead of him that we have to keep stopping to wait. We don’t mind, though, because the brush isn’t hard to move through and the sweet smell keeps growing stronger.
Jonathon’s calling directions out, and I notice we’re turning an awful lot. A few times, he stops to rest, hands resting against the bark of the trees, and so do Noah and I. We want to be respectful, because if he’s mad at us Jonathon won’t talk and I’ve heard Noah say more times than I can count that Jonathon is the singular most interesting human left on this planet. Eventually, there’s a very steep downslope, and then Jonathon lets out a joyful yell. That means we’re going the right way, I guess, but Noah gives me a concerned look, eyeing the magnitude of the downhill.
“There’s no way he’s going to be able to do this,” is all Noah says before he hands me his rucksack, and climbs back up the slope. After a few seconds of struggling, Noah maneuvers Jonathon so that he’s giving the older man a piggy-back ride.
From there, we make significantly faster progress, and there’s a little bit of light banter as Noah tries to tempt Jonathon into letting slip what he’s looking for here. Personally, I have no idea, because this place is more of the same style of forest we’ve been scouting for weeks. The only differences are the sweeter smell and that there’s more rocks and slightly darker soil. But, then I remember one of my first lessons in history from Jonathon, how very few things that exist are inherently extraordinary (those he calls the seven wonders); most things that humans admire are either the result of human events or design or both. Architecture, Jonathon says, was one of the singular best ideas man ever had.
“What are all those rocks to the left?” Noah asks, panting a little under the Jonathon’s weight.
“Maybe nothing, maybe something,” Jonathon answers, his normally deep voice practically leaping with anticipation. I know now that we’re going to find whatever it is we’re supposed to, but I still have no idea what it’s going to be. I’m running through the last few conversations Jonathon and I have had in my head, but we haven’t even talked about America for a while.
“Is it true that people used math to build huge things out of stone? That they could get every piece perfectly uniform?” I want so desperately to find the connection, because I know I’m the one who’s supposed to, so I’ll start there.
“The pyramids in Egypt,” Jonathon supplies, and I nod. “Those aren’t the only things, Anna. Stone has been, quite literally, the building blocks of mankind for much longer than you or I, or even Noah, can comprehend.” At that, Noah chuckles a little, and I’m starting to figure out what questions to ask. The stone to our left is still largely obscured by trees, but I know the stone is something.
“What else have people built out of it? What did the Americans do with it?” I’m careful that the tone of my voice is curious, but not overly so.
“You’re far too clever,” Jonathon says, and nothing more. After a break, Noah breaks the silence.
“Are rock formations usually that… smooth?” he asks, looking at the stones and boulders that are now almost completely behind us. The land is leveling out again as well.
“Not much longer, you impossible children.” There’s a chuckle, but I can hear the nervousness in his voice. It’s the same kind of nervousness that I can hear in my mother’s voice when my sisters wander too far from my mother, or when Noah and I run across something especially peculiar on a scouting trip.
I don’t remember how much farther we walk before Noah and I give up on our mentor and simply talk to each other. It’s an easy, effortless conversation, one that starts with the basic happenings of our camp and then spirals from there.
“And there are these things called wormholes, which can transport you across the entire universe faster than light,” Noah explains, because when Jonathon doesn’t want to talk I’m his next best option to discuss the brilliant things he sees out there in the sky, and the things he knows are there but can’t prove. I don’t understand why it matters, but he looks so happy talking about it that I can’t fault him.
“Aren’t there those here?” I ask, before stooping to the ground to pick up a worm from its hole. “This just came from a wormhole.”
“Oh, Anna Banana.” Noah laughs as he grabs the worm out of my hands. It’s a deep, throaty laugh that’s almost infectious, but I’m too confused to laugh. “These wormholes don’t connect two openings of this ordinary planet. They’re named like that because the wormholes don’t look like more than a circle, like these do to us, but they’re so much more. They connect opposite ends of the universe.”
“Well, I like these ones better. I can see them, and know they’re real.” There’s no real animosity to my voice, but it’s true. I don’t want to travel across the universe (which I also don’t understand because Noah also told me the universe is so big that it never ends. And that it’s growing, which just doesn’t make sense if it’s already as big as it can be); I want to travel across this one planet.
“Anna, you are entirely—“ Noah’s about to continue, but then Jonathon taps his shoulder.
“It’s still here.” Jonathon’s voice is so quiet, so hoarse, that I’m not entirely sure he speaks for a moment, but then he points upward. Staring at us, out of the stone, are four faces, completely unaffected by the forest surrounding them. I don’t recognize any of them, only that they’re men, and I have no idea how they’re there. “How did it survive, after all of these years?”
“What is this?” I ask, my voice catching in my chest. I want to know who these people are, how their faces are here, and why. What could possess Americans to do this? It takes my mother a very long time to carve one little figurine out of stone, and here are four perfectly real faces, blown up to near-mountain size. “Why would you want to find this?”
“Americans are crazy,” Noah whispers, looking to Jonathon. “These are… what are these?”
“I believe Anna has the right question.” The old man’s voice is still a near whisper, and there are tears leaking out of his eyes. “This is Mount Rushmore.”
“It’s not a mountain.” For once, it’s Noah who sounds like the child, but a connection appears in my head. I remember that name, from when I first learned how America had come to exist.
“Washington’s up there, and so is Jefferson,” I say, carefully pronouncing their confusing names. “I don’t know which ones they are, but Jefferson wrote the document that said we were free, and George Washington led the fight for it. So later, long after they died, one guy decided to thank them by carving this, um, this monument. Which ones are they?” Smiling, Jonathon points to the first two faces. “But then who are the others?”
“The one next to Jefferson is named Theodore Roosevelt—“
“That’s my dad’s name!” Noah blurts out, before flushing red after realizing his interruption.
“And that man, that fourth man, that brilliant man, is Abraham Lincoln.” Jonathon’s hands are shaking, and the tears are running faster down his face.
“What did he do? What did he do to earn his place here?” I ask, unable to meet Jonathon’s eyes. I’ve never seen him this emotional, but I want to know. I want to know what this Abraham Lincoln has done to earn the respect of something as brilliant as Jonathon.
“My child, I have not told you certain things for a reason,” Jonathon whispers, eyes looking at the magnificent faces, as they look to the sky (or, as Noah would say, space).
“I want to know.” My words are not harsh, but Jonathon acts as though I don’t know he doesn’t tell me things. He tells me and Noah the intriguing parts, the amazing parts, and the overwhelmingly beautiful parts of history and space, but there’s had to be bad. We’ve ended up the way we’re living, after all, so there’s at least one thing that went terribly wrong. “What makes Lincoln so special?”
“Anna, are you sure—“ Noah starts, his voice full of concern, but one look from me stops him in his tracks.
“A long time ago, long before I or even those as old to me as I am to you were alive, America had something called slavery. Slavery has been in many places, but never quite in the manner we had.” From there, Jonathon explains, and explains slowly, how people with skin as light as mine didn’t think people with skin as dark as his were people, and treated them worse than we treat horses. He talks for a long time about how it worked, and how Lincoln set Jonathon’s race, what he calls the group of people with the same skin as him, free from slavery. He didn’t fix everything, not nearly, but Jonathon says Lincoln set a series of motions in action that helped the goal of equality, another strange concept, become realistic.
As Jonathon talks, I find it harder and harder to look at the wall. He’s told me about the freedom that America bases itself on, and yet he knows all of the problems that he and his skin group faced, and continued to face right up into the day that the idea of civilization itself fell apart. There’s a sick twisting of guilt in my stomach, and I feel the burdens of my skin color. We have abused other people for hundreds, probably thousands, of years, and there’s nothing I can do to rewrite this history. I don’t care if I am from a time where there’s no division between people of different skin colors or hair colors or anything else; people who looked like me hurt other people, a crime that for us is punished with exile, because of something no one can control.
I want to know more. If humans are so flawed that as we evolved to make such beautiful things, we also made equally terrible things I want to know the terrible things with the good. I want to know more about how innocent people died, and how someone can decide the worth of someone else without ever talking to them. The entire idea is making my head spin, because if there are people that can make up the rational theories Noah can talk about for hours, how are there also people who don’t see the irrationality of… what is that word?
Race.
Without thinking, I look up again at the faces carved out of stone. They’re beautiful, untouched by nature and human mistakes both. I can see now their weary cheeks, the burdens that live in their eyes and in every wrinkle. They know what I’m feeling now, and more; they know the grave mistakes of their countrymen. But I can also feel something different.
I feel the energies of every other human, every other American, who has stared up at these men, and feels as strongly and as deeply as I do right now. But these are not men… these are icons that pulled a group of people that span until the edges of the world that I know together.
They had an identity, one that was riddled with terror but brimming with greatness. These Americans, they left a mark on the world that lasted longer than the world as they knew it. Jonathon can still look at the man he admires so greatly and remember what came before, can remember the bad before it got better.
It got better. It gets better.
(Is it better?)
As we turn our backs and make the slow trek away from this place to our simpler existence, I know why Jonathon teaches us these things. He is not content with this new world, and he will not accept it quietly. Jonathon is pushing us forward like those before have pushed themselves forward since they were first born of stardust and time.