In This Heat, I Don’t Know
Photograph by Carina Cain
By Carina Cain
There were bones in the treehouse.
A smirk in response, unabashed and all too familiar when she told him this.
“What, a skeleton in the closet?”
A scowl, practiced and overused. “Not funny, Marcus.”
But it was funny. Unfortunately.
They were sprawled out in bed and she was telling him the remnants of her dream. Recounting so as to not forget later, during the height and heat of the day. She was forgetting dreams too easily this summer. It made her itchy, squirmy. Usually details of the unreal stuck out so obtrusively after she woke up, they practically banged against the glass pane of her consciousness on and off for hours. But not anymore, recently.
Another scowl.
“It was somewhere near those trees that grow along the coast. What are those called?”
“Cupressus macrocarpa.”
Eye roll, loving. “In layman’s terms, please?”
“Monterey cypress.”
A fumble for a phone, a rectangle of light too bright all of a sudden, and a Google search.
“Yeah, probably those.”
Quiet for a while, syncopated breaths and the slight murmur of outside. A siren to puncture and urge alertness.
“What kind of bones?”
“Human.”
No hesitation.
The dream was like this: shaky VHS tape quality, tinted grey, and tied to some skewed version of reality, some memory, something she was told as a child, maybe. A likely story that had made an awful impression, smashed together with an asleep imagination. The treehouse was dilapidated, somehow both high up and firmly planted in the cypress’s root system. Craftsmanship was lacking because of the way the plywood boards leaned a bit too far left. But there were window panes with wavy glass, like the old ones in old houses built before the Great Depression. So it must have been something once, she could tell. Not anymore. Lots of graffiti and cigarette butts, probably due to teenagers and boredom. Lots of rooms, but also maybe just one room. Her brain couldn’t decide, couldn’t settle on one option. So she left that detail alone and moved on to the corner where she could see what she had been told would be there, what she told herself would be there. It was in first person and vile. And she couldn’t look away—not in the dream, and not in remembering the dream. She knew the bones would be there, and so they were. It was an unsettling revelation that demanded consideration. The remnants of a person. Blanched and unobscured or charred and buried beneath years of leaves and dirt? She wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure of anything except their undeniable presence.
She had the dream again, a week later. She woke them both up with the noises she made.
“They’re sick trees, you know.”
Marcus knew a lot about trees, and music production, and economics.
“What do you mean?”
She knew a lot about Impressionism, and fly-fishing, and SEO best practices.
“They collect rot. Old debris and stuff. The root system is really invasive.”
A gentle hand on one clammy arm. Steadying her.
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
A rise and fall of the chest, an attempt at control.
“Yeah, they basically live half-dead. Prone to fungus.”
His tone didn’t match the sentiment, but she left it alone.
“That’s too bad.”
The fog stacked up during each instance of dreaming her dream as the summer progressed. That’s what people didn’t realize, but what she knew by heart, by smell, while both sleeping and awake. June, July, August on the coast meant dense air and compacted condensation. It confused them—the sunny inland people who would drive over the mountain in search of balm and seaside attractions. Would be gravely disappointed to the effect of disgruntlement when the white wall hit their car. So solid it was like hitting a fourth, then fifth dimension. Like a vertical mirage, but lacking that shimmer of deception. Fog didn’t deceive, it wasn’t that precious.
She used to appreciate the fog from a distance, a safe distance. And then in it, at a comfortable speed and out of necessity, or by choice. But when approaching it fast, or being approached without warning, not so much. Fog could creep, definitely, as it usually did. But sometimes it was abruptly present and unforgiving in its intensity.
So, when she saw into the treehouse for the third or fourth time, or, no, maybe it was somewhere in between whole number experiences—a fractional visit—that the fog became this sort of presence. Rudely formidable. Consuming. It chewed on all corners of her vision, even making the thing that should have been impossible to ignore, those bones, seem less important and volatile. It took over her focus on the task (find out about the bones) and obscured her direction, her intention. It gave the feeling of being made to listen to a song in a minor key, alone, away from sunlight, and on an empty stomach. And it made her wonder about God. Could God be like this? Like fog. And people the treehouse. Then who did the bones belong to?
“Maybe it would help if we went out there, or something.”
It was too hot for covers, and still she had thrashed them into consciousness. She felt so bad.
“Went where?”
He knew she knew where, knew her too well. But he was also too nice to call her on it.
“Like to the bluffs. Where the cypress tunnel is.”
Forceful exhale, expending air and unrest and other things.
“Why would we do that?”
His hand in hers, but not patronizing. Patient.
“So you can go see if any of it’s actually there.”
There was that mellow kind of panic. She was submerged, and being gently rocked toward danger. Not a physical danger, but the fear still manifested right under her breastbone and fluttered alongside her heart. That feeling came with the dream. And she couldn’t explain this very specific kind of terror. Because it was also a curiosity. Like she was eager for a bad thing to happen. To discover a bad thing for herself.
The bones meant a bad thing had already happened, right? But here she was, waiting for one more. And somewhere deep inside the center of her, a need to understand, to bear witness, to encounter another very bad thing. Only because, like she knew the bones would be there every time she turned to that corner of the treehouse, she knew the bad thing would just happen and she would have to exist through it. Like when a person lies in bed during the in-between hours of late night and early morning, during July, and the air is so hot and there’s no AC, just a single fan plugged into a wall, and skin prickles and comfort is far off because the heat is so heavy a body has no choice but to relinquish control. No choice but to lie beneath this unavoidable stagnation and breathe. Palms flat, legs out, corpse-like but buzzing with energy—charged up with nowhere to go. Wired. Like this: the heat trapping restlessness in the body, the body trapped by the restlessness, the bed trapped by the body, and coolness and relief trapped somewhere deep in space, far away from the body. Momentary alleviation in the skimming of a foot across an unused corner of the bedsheet, but not enough to guarantee true comfort. Never enough.
“Let’s go tomorrow. Let’s go looking tomorrow.”
He knew not to touch her, now. Not yet. After she woke them up flailing too many times.
“I can’t, I don’t think.”
No breeze at 2 AM. Just unbearable warmth. And it’s funny because back in January she ached for summer.
“We’ll take the dog, it’ll be okay.”
An urgency to fix, to relieve, to encourage normalcy. Squeeze tar into cracking cement.
“No, I don’t want to do that.”
His unreleased sigh. Just there, trapped high up in his throat. She could hear it quaking.
“Then what?”
Whole body chilled in one moment, despite the obnoxious heat. Because what did she want to do? Or what did she want? She wanted to know. She wanted to know all of it, all at once and in uncomfortable detail. What happens right before a person becomes just bones? And if the fog comes rolling in or hits head-on. What about during? And after that? After the bones age out and nobody comes to claim them. Then what?
“I don’t know.”
High noon and the bridge sang. Screamed. Something the engineers didn’t account for, but somehow so fitting. Something she read about last night, and now here it was so far from her waking mind, but still so loud. Like a ghostly howl for all humans to hear, to hate, to love, to complain about, to rejoice in. To play along with, harmonize to, curse. It was in the dream now, and the sound seemed to be coming from the bones, too. High noon because the fog had burned off just enough to see the ocean from the treehouse window. Pulsating and alive and constant. Like the fog and the cypress trees, too. Ancient and still content to move in and out with the wind coming off the Pacific. Existing just because. Like the bridge, made by people. Made to sing, to scream, by people. Those people made by other people. Made to exist and then do their best. Sometimes their worst. But made, nonetheless.
And suddenly, no longer that horrible feeling. Stillness—in being and thinking.
No more dread or pinched unease. Just the bridge howling, those bones in the corner, and an unknowing. And the fog and the cypress trees and the ocean. The fog and the cypress trees and the ocean pulsating and alive and constant, and saying: We’ll be here to see it all through. Even when you aren’t anymore, even though they aren’t anymore. We saw it before you and we’ll see it all after you. After all of you. If you just leave us here, like this, we will see it through. So you don’t have to worry. It is so hot right now, and you want to know it all. You want to know about the why, and the how, and the what that comes before, during, and after. You thought you knew before, or you didn’t know, thought you would never know, and took that as enough and left it alone. But now you still don’t know and are no longer satisfied with your ignorance. That is a good thing. Stay wondering, stay thinking, stay questioning and unsatisfied. Don’t look away. But sleep for now. Sleep for now knowing you might discover it for yourself. Or, more probably, you might never discover it. But know that someday, somehow it will be discovered, and we will be here to bear witness.
Carina Cain is a Bay Area local who graduated from Lewis & Clark College this past summer with a B.A. in English. She is admittedly too fond of the hyphen, and wholeheartedly believes that arts education is fundamental to the well-being of society.
