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valley of fire
valley of fire
a novel
steven manners
Copyright © Steven Manners, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Michael Carroll
Designer: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Manners, Steven, 1957-
Valley of fire / by Steven Manners.
ISBN 978-1-55488-406-3
I. Title.
PS8576.A562 V35 2009 C813’.54 C2009-900496-8
1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
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For MBSEncore et toujours
God does not play dice with the universe — and win.
H e comes out of the desert in late afternoon, the only living thing in the Valley of Fire. It’s a Thursday in June, 4:03 p.m., according to a note in the ranger’s log book. The man identifies himself as John Munin. Tall, perhaps early forties. Old enough to know better. Explains there was a breakdown, engine overheated, the fuel line, he doesn’t know much about cars. His voice is raw; he’s been out there a while.
It’s fifty degrees cooler inside the ranger’s office. “I’ll get you some
“I’m a doctor.”
“Then you should know I have to check your pulse. Procedure.” Grips Munin’s wrist for a few moments, grunts, then releases him. “Could have been a close call.” Hands him a bottle of water and a packet of salt from a drive-through.
“I have to get back to town.”
“You can camp out on the cot in the back. I’ll give you a lift into town when my shift’s over. A couple of hours. You look done in.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“No trouble. I don’t mind the company. You can get a tow truck out here tomorrow.”
Munin takes off his shoes and sinks onto the cot. “It’s a rental.”
“Then I guess it’s their problem.”
Munin can feel the beginnings of a heat headache; his eyes feel scratchy and inflamed as if seeing in infrared. There’s a heat-bug whine in his ears, worse when he lies down. “Sorry to put you to so much trouble.”
“This kind of thing happens out here.”
“Do you like it? Out here?”
“You get used to it,” the ranger says. Meaning the stillness. Heat and loneliness. “It’s a popular spot. We get a lot of visitors. Decent folks. It’s like nowhere else, I guess. No buildings. Rock formations, of course, but nothing much else to look at. A lot of emptiness and open space. People tell themselves that’s what they want. Until they get lost in it.”
Contents
II. The Unconscious
III. Object of Desire
IV. Intimacy
V. Sex
VI. Giving
Acknowledgements
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised ...
— T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
America is roulette: streets, cities, states of mind. Waiting for a hit, waiting for your number to be called. As they fly into a Midwest stopover, a voice crackles in the background like a rumour, the news at noon over a neighbour’s headset announcing a flash flood in Maine, nuclear spill in the middle dozens, earthquake with its epicentre at thirty-six red. The statistics of fate in the air: in the recirculating stink of burger and fries, sweat tang of nachos, a godawful hummus stashed away in a carry-on knapsack. They were warned there would be no food on this flight so they’ve brought it aboard. Enough to feed the Russian army, as they used to say. Enough to feed the thrombus and embolus of future coronary events. They know the risks, they know the odds — they are gamblers, junketeers after all. Later, on their way home, there will be time to analyze the action, work the numbers like a tension knot in the back of the neck, head tight as a migraine, memories ruminating and repeating like flashbacks or flatus, thinking of the down and the double-down. But that’s later. Right now it’s the play. The straight-ahead path.