Scorch Atlas Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  WATER

  THE DISAPPEARED

  SMOKE HOUSE

  DAMAGE CLAIM QUESTIONNAIRE

  WHERE WERE YOU THAT EVENING?

  WHAT WAS HUMMING?

  HOW LONG HAVE YOU OWNED YOUR HOME?

  LIST THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF DAMAGE.

  HAVE YOU UNDERTAKEN METHODS TO PROTECT AGAINST FURTHER LOSS?

  CAN YOU STILL SMELL THE NIGHT?

  A JEW, A SHRINK AND AN ASSHOLE ALL WALK INTO A BAR…

  COULD YOU BE DOING SOMETHING MORE?

  HOW WILL YOU REMEMBER?

  WANT FOR WISH FOR NOWHERE

  TELEVISION MILK

  THE GOWN FROM MOTHER’S STOMACH

  SEABED

  TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD

  THE RUINED CHILD

  BATH or MUD or RECLAMATION or WAY IN / WAY OUT

  WATER DAMAGED PHOTOS OF OUR HOME BEFORE I LEFT IT

  EXPONENTIAL

  BLOOM ATLAS

  SURFACE(S)

  DIVE

  ON SWIMMING PAST OUR HOUSE

  RESURFACE

  BLOOM

  HOW THE BIRDS FLEW

  OPERATIVE

  FURTHER

  COMA OCEAN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EVER

  Copyright Page

  Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas is precisely that—a series of maps,

  or worlds, “tied so tight they couldn’t crane their necks.”

  Everything is either destroyed, rotting or festering—and not

  only the physical objects, but allegiances, hopes, covenants.

  Yet these worlds are not abstract exercises, he is speaking

  of life as it is, where there might be or may be, “glass over

  grave sites in display,” and where we will be forced to make

  or where we have “made facemasks out of old newspapers.”

  The sole glimmer of light comes in recollection, as in:

  “a bear the size of several men... There in the woods

  behind our house, when I was still a girl like you.”

  —JESSE BALL, author of The Way Through Doors and Samedi the Deafness

  There’s something so big about Blake Butler’s writing. Big as men’s heads. Each inhale of Blake’s wheeze brings streamers of loose hair, the faces of lakes and oceans, whales washed up half-rotten. You can try putting on a facemask made out of old newspaper. You can breathe in smaller rhythms. But you won’t be able to keep this man out once you’ve opened his book. Open it!

  —KEN SPARLING, author of Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall

  I am always looking for new writers like Blake Butler and rarely finding them, but Scorch Atlas is one of those truly original books that will make you remember where you were when you first read it. Scorch Atlas is relentless in its apocalyptic accumulation, the baroque language stunning in its brutality, and the result is a massive obliteration.

  —MICHAEL KIMBALL, author of Dear Everybody

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Gracious thanks to the editors of the journals in which these stories previously appeared in slightly altered forms, including:

  ‘The Many Forms of Rain ___ Sent Upon Us’ appeared in DIAGRAM’s 2008 Innovative Fiction issue. Thanks to Ander Monson.

  ‘The Disappeared’ appeared in New Ohio Review (/nor). Thanks to John Bullock.

  ‘Smoke House’ appeared in Hobart. Thanks to Aaron Burch and Elizabeth Ellen.

  ‘Gravel’ appeared in Quick Fiction. Thanks to Adam and Jennifer Pieroni.

  ‘Damage Claim Questionnaire’ appeared in Lake Effect. Thanks to George Looney.

  ‘Want for Wish for Nowhere’ appeared in New York Tyrant. Thanks to GianCarlo DiTrapano.

  ‘Television Milk’ appeared in The Open Face Sandwich. Thanks to Alan Bajandas and Benjamin Solomon.

  ‘The Gown from Mother’s Stomach’ appeared in Ninth Letter. Thanks to Jodee Stanley and Andrew Ervin.

  ‘Seabed’ appeared in Phoebe. Thanks to Ryan Call.

  ‘Tour of the Drowned Neighborhood’ appeared in Harpur Palate. Thanks to Barrett Bowlin.

  ‘The Ruined Child’ appeared in Barrelhouse. Thanks to Dave Housley, Matt Kirkpatrick, Mike Ingram, Joe Killiany, and Aaron Pease.

  ‘Bath or Mud or Reclamation…’ appeared in Avery Anthology and in Proximity as a mini-book. Thanks to Andrew Palmer, Steph Fiorelli, Adam Koehler, and Mairead Case.

  ‘Water Damaged Photos of Our House Before I Left It’ appeared in LIT. Thanks to Emily Taylor.

  ‘Exponential’ appeared in Willow Springs. Thanks to Sam Ligon.

  Sections from‘Bloom Atlas’ appeared in Ellipsis as‘Coma Ocean’ and in Oranges & Sardines as‘Bloom Atlas’. Thanks to Carl Evans and Didi Menendez.

  Caught by the rain far from shelter Macmann stopped and lay down, saying, The surface thus pressed against the ground will remain dry, whereas standing I would get uniformly wet all over, as if rain were a mere matter of drops per hour, like electricity.

  Samuel Beckett, MALONE DIES

  On the other hand, the sky on hot dustless days would leap with light, nails would wink in their boards, pails blaze like beacons, and the glass of the several stores would shout the sun at you, empty your head through your ears with whistling sunshine.

  William Gass, THE TUNNEL

  For anyone, most likely, & in memory of Jeff

  WATER

  We watched our dirt go white, our crop fields blacken. Trees collapsed against the night. Insects masked our glass so thick we couldn’t see. The husks of roach and possum filled the gutters. Every inch mucked with white film. All spring the sky sat stacked with haze so high and deep it seemed a wall, a lidless cover sealing in or sealing out. Those were stretched days, croaking. I don’t know what about them broke. I don’t know why the rain came down in endless veil. It streaked the cities, wiped the wires. It splashed the dust out from our cricked knees. It came a week straight, then another. The earth turned to mud and grass to slick. Minor homes sucked underground. Children were washed out in the sloshing. The streets and theme parks bubbled brown. Some long weeks it went on that way. The air began to mush downtown. We’d just taken up wearing knee boots and canoes to market when the soft water turned to ice. Our once parched apartments saddled under gleaming. The fat white bricks pounded the face of anything uncovered. It was the last week of July. Ice dented buildings, ruined car windshields, ripped limbs clean off of trees. I saw an old man clobbered in the street, his glasses shattered, his dentures flush with blood. The backyard stacked knee-deep around me. The drum woke tones deep in my ear. I couldn’t sleep right. You never knew what might cave in. Frost killed the power, ruined the highways. Those who tried to drive were mostly mauled—run together in gagging slicks of solid liquid. Many neighborhoods froze enclosed. We spent uncounted ugly evenings with nowhere to look but at each other. When the TV finally came back, the news stations had such a backlog they began to list the names of the dead between commercials like the credits to some movie we wished we’d never seen.

  THE DISAPPEARED

  The year they tested us for scoliosis, I took my shirt off in front of the whole gym. Even the cheerleaders saw my bruises. I’d been scratching in my sleep. Insects were coming in through cracks we couldn’t find. There was something on the air. Noises from the attic. My skin was getting pale.

  I was the first.

  The several gym coaches, with their reflective scalps and high-cut shorts, crowded around me blowing whistles. They made me keep my shirt up over my head while they stood around and poked and pondered. Foul play was susp
ected. They sent directly for my father. They made him stand in the middle of the gym in front of everyone and shoot free-throws to prove he was a man. I didn’t have to see to know. I heard the dribble and the inhale. He couldn’t even hit the rim.

  The police showed up and bent him over and led him by his face out to their car. You could hear him screaming in the lobby. He sounded like a woman.

  For weeks after, I was well known. Even bookworms threw me up against the lockers, eyes gleaming. The teachers turned their backs. I swallowed several teeth. The sores kept getting worse. I was sent home and dosed with medication. I massaged cream into my wounds. I was not allowed to sleep alone. My uncle came to stay around me in the evenings. He sat in my mother’s chair and watched TV. I told him not to sit there because no one did after Mother. Any day now Dad expected her return. He wanted to keep the smell of her worn inside the cracking leather until then. My uncle did not listen. He ordered porn on my father’s cable bill. He turned the volume up and sat watching in his briefs while I stood there knowing I’d be blamed.

  Those women had the mark of something brimming in them. Something ruined and old and endless, something gone.

  By the third night, I couldn’t stand. I slept in fever, soaked in vision. Skin cells showered from my soft scalp. My nostrils gushed with liquid. You could see patterns in my forehead—oblong clods of fat veins, knotted, dim. I crouped and cowed and cringed among the lack of moonlight. I felt my forehead coming off, the ooze of my blood becoming slower, full of glop. I felt surely soon I’d die and there’d be nothing left to dicker. I pulled a tapeworm from my ear.

  My uncle sent for surgeons. They measured my neck and graphed my reason. Backed with their charts and smarts and tallies, they said there was nothing they could do. They retested my blood pressure and reflexes for good measure. They said say ah and stroked their chins. Then they went into the kitchen with my uncle and stood around drinking beer and cracking jokes.

  The verdict on my father’s incarceration was changed from abuse to vast neglect, coupled with involuntary impending manslaughter. His sentence was increased. They showed him on the news. On screen he did not look like the man I’d spent my life in rooms nearby. He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever known.

  The bugs continued to swarm my bedroom. Some had huge eyes. Some had teeth. From my sickbed I learned their patterns. They’d made tunnels through the floor. I watched them devour my winter coat. I watched them carry my drum kit off in pieces.

  Another night I dreamed my mother. She had no hair. Her eyes were black. She came in through the window of my bedroom and hovered over. She kissed the crud out from my skin. Her cheeks filled with the throbbing. She filled me up with light.

  The next morning my wounds had waned to splotches.

  After a week, I was deemed well.

  In the mirror my face looked smaller, somehow puckered, shrunken in. My eyes had changed from green to deep blue. The school required seven faxes of clearance before my readmission. Even then, no one came near me. I had to hand in my assignments laminated. I was reseated in far corners, my raised arm unacknowledged. Once I’d had the answers; now I spent the hours fingering the gum under my desk.

  On weekends I went to visit Dad in prison. He was now serving twenty-five to life. They made him wear a plastic jumpsuit that enclosed his head to keep the felons’ breath from spreading their ideas. Through the visor, my father’s eyes were bloodshot, puffy. His teeth were turning brown. His small paunch from years of beer had flattened. He had a number on his arm. He refused to look at me directly. He either shook his head or nodded. This was my fault, I knew he thought. We spent our half-hour grunting, gumming, shrugged.

  Each time before I left he asked one question, in sign language: HAS YOUR MOTHER FOUND HER WAY BACK YET?

  Each time before I left he slipped me a ten and told me where to go.

  At home we had a map of downtown that Dad kept on the kitchen table where we used to eat together. He’d marked with dated dots in fluorescent marker where he thought he’d seen her last. Mom was one of several who’d gone missing in recent weeks. Each night, between commercials, the news showed reams and reams of disappeared—pigtailed teens and Air Force pilots, stockbrokers, grandpas, unwed mothers. Hundreds had gone unaccounted. The missing ads covered milk cartons on every side. The government whispered terrorism. On the news they used our nation’s other problems as distraction: the wilting trees; the mold-grown buildings, high-rise rooftops clung together; the color shift of oceans; the climaxed death rate of new babies.

  The way the shores washed up with blood foam.

  How at night you couldn’t see the moon.

  Before prison, Dad had sat at night with his cell phone on his knee on vibrate, waiting to feel the pulse shoot up his leg and hear her on the other end, alive. His skin would flex at any tremor. The phone rang through the night. The loan folks wanted back their money. Taxes. Electricity. They would not accept Visa or good will. Dad developed a tic and cursed with no control. He believed my mother’s return in his heart. His list of sightings riddled the whole map. He thought he’d heard her once in the men’s room at the movies. Once he’d seen her standing on the edge of a tobacco billboard, pointing down. He wanted me to keep tabs on all these places. As well, he wanted farther acres combed. Mom had been appearing in his sleep. She would not be hard to find if he truly loved her, he said she whispered. You should already know by now. On his skin, while in his cell bed, he made lists of the places where he should have looked: that spot in the ocean where he’d first kissed her; the small plot where they’d meant one day to be buried side by side; behind the moon where they joked they’d live forever; in places no one else could name. He wanted a full handwritten report of each location.

  After school, before the sun dunked, I carried the map around the nearer streets in search. Sometimes, as my dad had, I felt mother’s hair against my neck. I smelled her sweet sweat somehow pervading even in the heady rush of highway fumes. I heard her whistle no clear tune, the way she had with me inside her and when I was small enough to carry. I used the hours between school’s end and draining light. I trolled the grocery, hiked the turnpike, stalked the dressing rooms of several local department stores. I felt that if I focused my effort to the right degree I could bring an end to all this sinking. I’d find her somewhere, lost and listless, lead her home, reteach her name. Newly aligned, she’d argue dad’s innocence in court to vast amends, and then there’d be the three of us forever, fixed in the only home we’d ever known.

  I did not find her at the creek bed where she’d taught me how to swim via immersion.

  I spent several hopeful evenings outside the dry cleaners where she’d always taken all our clothes.

  There were always small pools of buzzed air where I could feel her just behind me, or inside.

  My uncle did not go home. He’d taken over my parents’ bed and wore Dad’s clothing. Through the night he snored so loud you could hear it throughout the house. You could hear as well the insects crawling: their tiny wings and writhing sensors. You could hear the wreathes of spore and fungus. The slither in the ground. It was all over, not just my house. Neighborhood trees hung thick with buzz. House roofs collapsed under heavy weight. Everyone had knives. They ran photo essays in the independent papers. The list of disappeared grew to include news anchors, journalists, and liberal pundits. I stayed awake and kept my hair combed. I tried not to walk in sludge.

  I received an email from my father: SHE SAYS THERE’S NOTM UCHT IME.

  I committed to further hours. I stayed up at night and blended in. I looked in smaller places: through the sidewalk; in the glare of stoplights; in the mouths of tagless dogs. I avoided major roads for the police. Out-of-town travel had been restricted. They mentioned our best interests. They said recovery begins at home. I marched through the forest with a flashlight, not quite laughing, being careful not to die. Trees fell at random in the black air. Anthills smothered whole backyards. It hadn’t rained in h
alf a year. You might start a mile-wide fire with one mislaid cigarette. The corporate news channel spent their hours showing pictures of dolphin babies and furry kittens cuddling in the breeze.

  Meanwhile, at school, other people started getting sick. First, several players on the JV wrestling team shared a stage of ringworm— bright white mold growths on their muscles. The reigning captain collapsed in the hot lunch line. They had to cancel future matches. The infestation was blamed on high heat and tight quarters. Days later, Jenny Rise, the head cheerleader grew a massive boil on the left side of her head. It swelled the skin around her eyelids until she couldn’t see. She went to the hospital not for the boil itself, but for how she’d tried to stab it out.

  The seething moved in small creation through the cramped halls of our school. Popular kids got it. Kids with glasses. Kids in special ed. Teachers called out absent, then their subs did. Sometimes we were left in rooms unmanned for hours. There were so many missing they quit sending people home. Fast rashes rushed from collars. Guys showed up with their eyes puckered in glop. My lab partner, Maria Sanchez, grew a strange mustache. They had to sweep the hallways several times a day.