Through a Glass Darkly
(For Ishmael)
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"Kelly, take Eddy outside and play with him. I can't write with him fussing."

I'm fourteen, ten years older than my little brother, so Mom expects me to entertain him whenever I'm home. I just got back from biking on a hilly two-lane highway to the library in town. Thirteen miles round trip, and I'm pooped.

Eddy is watching me, his sandy hair falling into his eyes, which are almost the same color. He looks a lot like me, especially after I got my hair cut short when school was out. I wipe the irritation off my face. It's not Eddy's fault we're such a mess in our family.

It's Dad's fault, though I can't say that to Mom. Dad left us on a farm in Iowa and went off to Nigeria to help organize a union. He knew what had happened to other labor organizers at that oil company, but he went anyway.

What Dad and Mom didn't know yet was that Mom was pregnant. Eddy was born two months after Dad's death. The oil company cabled us about the accident. Mom has been trying ever since to find out what really happened and write a book about it. She's sure Dad was murdered, and she can't let that multinational corporation get away with their cover-up story.

I hand Mom the mail from our mailbox at the road. There's the insurance check, which she'll be glad to see. And a letter from her agent. In his last letter he told her he found a publisher for her book about Dad, even though only the first three chapters are written. This letter could be news about being on the Oprah show, or about getting the first chapter into Mother Jones magazine. So maybe Mom will be in a good mood this afternoon, for a change.

"Let's go out to the shed and see if we can find enough boards and chicken wire to build a bunny cage," I say to Eddy. We're renting an old farmhouse that has piles of farm junk around some of the outbuildings. We had to vacate the parsonage in town when Dad resigned as minister to go to Nigeria. This was the only affordable place he could find for us.

"How will we get a bunny?" Eddy asks, watching me saw a board. Our handsaw is dull, but I manage.

"We'll look for a nest of babies. There must be lots of them around 'cause we see lots of mommy and daddy rabbits in our garden."

He keeps up a steady stream of chatter, which I mostly tune out as we work. "How will the bunny get in our cage?" He's trying now to pound in half-inch fence staples to fasten chicken wire to the wood. Some of the staples get bent halfway in, but they hold the wire anyway.

"See this? I'm screwing hinges on this board for a door." Our cage, sloppily put together with scrap wood, rusty chicken wire, and mismatched hardware, is about the ugliest thing I've ever seen. But it's kept Eddy happy for over an hour.

"Okay, I'm all worn out from so much hammering and sawing and screw-driving. I'm going to read the book I just got from the library. You can start looking in the weeds around the garden for a nest of baby bunnies, all right?"

"I want you to come with me."

"I don't want to. I want to read. You can do this all by yourself. You don't need me every minute. If you see a baby bunny, pick it up gently and pet it so it won't be scared. You'll have to pick lots of clover for it to eat."

Making a cage was a brilliant idea, I think. Feeding a bunny should keep him busy for several hours every day. He's still pouting when I go back into the house after my book.

Mom is still sitting at her desk. When she turns to look at me, her expression gives me a jolt. "Mom? What's wrong?"

"The small press that accepted my book has filed for bankruptcy."

"What about getting a chapter in Mother Jones?"

"Mother Jones told my agent it won't fit into their plans for several more issues, and made no promises."

"Any news about the Oprah show?"

"I don't think that'll happen. Thousands of writers want to get on her show. Her office staff sent a form letter to my agent that didn't offer much hope. I must have chosen an inexperienced agent, but how did I know that?"

"I'm sorry, Mom."

"I promised your dad . . . if anything happened to him . . . that I'd make it my life's work to expose what oil companies are doing to Third World people." She hides her face in her hands, mumbling more to herself than to me. "I thought if I could get the book written, my agent would take care of the rest. Now how can I keep my promise to Ed?"

I don't know what to say. She's staring at the wall when I go out with my book and a pillow. I prop myself up in our hammock and open the book, My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. Cliff Farley did a book report on it in my English class last spring, and I want to see how Quinn gets away with casting a gorilla as a teacher of wisdom.

Cliff argued that making his philosopher a gorilla gave Quinn a good way of looking at humans objectively. Okay, another reason I want to read the book is to have something to talk to Cliff about. He's the other brain in our class. Most of the guys aren't that interesting to me.

I get absorbed in the book and forget about Mom's problems. Julie has met Ishmael, the telepathic gorilla in a dark room behind a glass wall. They're discussing some ideas nobody ever questions that Ishmael says are myths.

Suddenly a scream snaps me back to reality. Omigod, that's Eddy!

I'm out of the hammock and running toward the sound, yelling his name. I scramble over the wide wooden gate into our landlord's pasture. I shouldn't have left him alone. He probably followed a rabbit into the pasture, and it took him toward the creek.

He'll be drowned by the time I get there. We'll lose him, too! My long legs carry me across the rough ground, dodging gopher holes and thistles and cow pies.

"Eddy!" No answer. "Where are you?" I need to hear his voice again to get his exact location. Why didn't I pay more attention to what he was doing?

"Eddy!" I hear Mom's panicky voice now, coming from near the house. She must have heard me yelling.
I think I hear something. The sound of tall weeds brushing against me muffles the noise, whatever it is. I stop running to listen. Nothing now. "Eddy!" I yell again. There's an answer, not as loud as the first scream, but it gives me a direction. He's still alive--if I can just get there in time!

I reach the trees that grow along the creek and push through brush. I'm scrambling down the bank when I see him. He's up to his chin in swirling water at the base of a small falls, crying in terror, but his voice gets cut off every time a wave washes over his face and he swallows water. He sputters and cries harder and another wave flows over his face.

Mom is calling again, closer now. Wading toward him, I'm up to my thighs in water when the rocky bottom gives way to deep, soft mud, and my sneakers sink into it. I reach Eddy, try to lift him and can't. He clings to me, coughing up water.

"You're stuck!" I try again to pull him free. Holding him with one arm, I crouch down to feel what's happening. His feet are completely submerged in mud. I work my fingers down his ankles to his shoes and manage to pull the Velcro strips.

With a major effort, I lift him free, one foot bare, the other with a muddy sock dangling half off. He winds his legs around my hips and clings to my neck. I'm crying, too, now that it's over.

Mom is in the water coming toward us. She takes Eddy out of my arms and wades back with him. I can tell she's having a hard time moving through the sucking mud with Eddy's weight added to her own.

I crouch down again, feeling for the shoes, my face barely out of the swirling water. It's his only pair, and money is tight for us. When I've managed to work the shoes free, I slog my way back to shore with them.
Mom is sitting on the grassy bank, holding Eddy tightly, both of them sobbing. "I'm sorry," I tell her. "I thought he was playing in the yard. I was reading my book in the hammock."

She looks at me. "Eddy matters so much more than whether or not you ever read that damn book," is all she says.

I just stand there. Who saved him, after all? She's buried her face in Eddy's hair now. I walk away, my sneakers slooshing at every step. Where does she get off? She's been ignoring both of us for hours every day. And what about Dad taking off to seek stars in his heavenly crown instead of doing the everyday things a dad should do?

It's after Mom has put Eddy to bed that night that she knocks at my door. "Come in," I say, my voice flat. The only other thing I've said to her since I left the creek was that I wasn't hungry when she called me to dinner.

"Kelly, I want to apologize." She still has one hand on the doorknob.

I give a little nod, sprawled on my bed with the book, electric currents zapping around in my brain. I've been looking at humans through Ishmael's gorilla eyes. Dad thought we could save the world by tinkering with the system. Fight corruption and greed to get better wages and safer working conditions. Try to make people better. Utopian, Ishmael says. Get real. We have to work with what we are, not what we wish we were.
Ishmael asks how humans got into this mess in the first place. Why do industrialized nations think we know the only right way to live and force it on everybody? He asks what's so great about making everyone either get a job or starve? Maybe the tribal system is okay. It was successful for millions of years. Maybe . . .

Mom sits on my bed now, breaking into my thoughts. "I'm feeling confused," she says, "but I see that I need to put you and Eddy ahead of my promise to your dad."

I nod again, laying my book aside and sitting up cross-legged. I try to find words for an idea that is taking shape at the edge of my mind. Ishmael--Daniel Quinn--doesn't have answers, either. He wants us to look in new places. Escape from the thought cages our culture has built for us.

It would be hard for Mom to drop out of Dad's battle because that would be admitting his death was for nothing. It's like she's knee-deep in sucking mud and doesn't know how to get out. I start to put my arm around her, but she's quicker, pulling me close.

"We'll muddle through," she says into my hair. I think of Dad, how he did what he could see to do.