Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

As the sun set below the mountains, the flames were already reaching higher than treetops. He felt himself hitching to cry all over again as he watched the flames take it, and the woodshed, and his mama—who was going onward with no coffin, no tombstone, no sweet-voiced eulogy from the best preacher in Montana: a quiet recitation of the Twenty-third Psalm by Aunt Germaine, a lick of flame to kerosene, and then…

Fire.

Aunt Germaine stood beside him, her arm around his shoulder as the flames went higher. “Jason, this is something no young man should have to do, but so many do. You are very brave.”

Jason coughed, to hide that he was crying. “Not my idea,” he said, quiet enough that he’d figure his aunt couldn’t hear. But her ears were better than her eyes and she answered him:

“You wouldn’t know,” she said. “You haven’t seen the town yet. You haven’t seen what this germ does.”

“I know well enough,” he said. “Mama should be buried.”

“Why’s that?” Germaine raised her voice as the flames hit the woodpile. “She Catholic? A Jewess?”

“You know she ain’t,” said Jason.

“Then cremation is still good enough for my sister. It was good enough for Mr. Frost, it’s good enough for Ellen.”

Jason swallowed hard. They had had a falling out, Aunt Germaine and his mama—that was a sure thing.

“If we do not do this,” said his aunt, “then what happens when some trapper comes by in the melt, starts rooting through the house and picks up that germ? What happens, I will tell you, is this: it is an epidemic. Like the cholera.”

“Is that what this is?”

Aunt Germaine put up her hand. “The flames are taking,” she said. “Let us pray for your mother’s immortal soul.”

“All right,” he said. “I will.”

And Jason bowed his head, and after a moment of sad quiet, he imagined a great celestial light descending over this infernal pyre. And imagining that, he thought up a prayer.

Oh Lord, he prayed, please see my mama to Heaven where she belongs. And Lord, see to it, please, that should my pa ever wish to speak with her from where he writhes and burns in that Other Place—

Jason opened his eyes and stared into the flames that consumed the cabin old John Thistledown had built the year Jason was born.

—please, Lord: see to it he stays where he is and keeps his damn peace.

§

A month ago, shooting the pigs might have brought Jason some measure of satisfaction. Now—somehow, the act seemed capricious; low-down cruel. But Aunt Germaine insisted.

“They are probably fine,” she said. “But who knows if whatever it was that took poor Ellen is not also somehow attached to the swine?”

“It don’t seem likely,” said Jason. “And anyhow—those pigs have value at market.”

Aunt Germaine shook her head. “There is no market,” she said. “Not close by. Go on, young man. Take your shot.”

“Well,” he said doubtfully, “they are cannibals.”

In the end, Jason was down six bullets from the Winchester, having missed with one and but wounded with another.

He made sure to gather up the casings for reuse before he and his new aunt started off, in the dawn light, toward the snow-choked pass to Cracked Wheel. Jason wondered how they were going to do it. But as they crossed a rise that had been beaten down by Aunt Germaine’s footsteps, and rounded a tree, he saw it. There, sticking out of the snow, were two pair of snowshoes.

“Have you ever walked in snowshoes?” she asked.

“‘Course,” he said. “There was a couple pair that burned up on the back of the woodshed. Didn’t think of them until now.”

“Well, it is a good thing I thought ahead,” said Aunt Germaine. “See? I brought an extra pair.”

“In case of survivors,” he said.

“That is right.”

“That was good thinking, Aunt Germaine.”

Aunt Germaine reached out, tossed one pair of shoes onto the snow, and stepped onto them. She motioned for Jason to do the same, and then looked at him very intently.

“I will look after you, Jason—from now on. I’ll see to you. We are, after all, family.”

“Family,” said Jason as he stomped his feet into place on the snowshoes. He hadn’t thought he’d be using that word again, but it felt good coming off his tongue.

“Let me carry your bag, Aunt,” he said as they headed off south.

3 - The Horror at Cracked Wheel

Cracked Wheel, Montana, was the biggest place that Jason Thistledown had ever visited, but he was wise enough to know that didn’t mean much. From talking to others when they came to town from time to time, he understood that Cracked Wheel was but a flyspeck next to the great towns of Helena, of Butte, of Billings. He knew that all combined, they weren’t any of them a thing to compare to Philadelphia where Aunt Germaine came from, or New York, where the scale of things dwarfed whole mountain ranges.