Bitters

By Kaimana Wolff

"He would never go back, unless feet first."

Is there life after drowning in a sea of deception? Elan lives large but real life–and his one love–elude him. If he hits bottom, can the Green Fairy save him?

Weeks after Victoria and Elan disappear on a romantic elopement, officers find a small plane at the bottom of Bitterroot Lake—with Victoria in it and no sign of Elan except remnants of the plane's avionics in a burned-out campfire.

Ray Walker, the youngest deputy sheriff in his town's history, cannot let this case become his only failure—especially after Victoria's sister pays a call.

Meanwhile, the Green Fairy is escorting a new man-about-town to all the best places—and keeping him alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stars Above, Stars Below Press
• Release date: May 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386233947

Kaimana Wolff

Kaimana Wolff, novelist, poet and playwright, survives in a small community on the coast of British Columbia with her friend, a beautiful soul housed in a wolfish body. Often Lord Tyee and Wolff can be heard devising new howls, songs and dances on the lawns, in the parks, and in glens of the great forests still permitted to stand.

Book preview

In 1805, the bitterroot was discovered by Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, hence the genus name Lewisia. The species name, rediviva, refers to the plant’s hardiness. In fact, bitterroot can live for more than a year without water. For this reason, bitterroot has also been called the resurrection flower.

Montana's peoples used the plant as an important part of their diet. Tribes timed their spring migrations with the blooming of the bitterroot on the hillsides, where it could be abundant. After being dug, cleaned, and dried, the root provided a lightweight, nutritious supplement to a diet that otherwise consisted of wild game to a large extent. ...[T]he root was an item of barter and exchange. A sackful commanded a substantial price - usually of equal value to a horse. One ounce of dried root provided enough nourishment for a meal, but the plant was seldom used uncooked, since it has a bitter taste and may cause swelling if eaten raw. More traditionally, women boiled the root, then mixed it with meat or berries. Pulverized and seasoned with deer fat and moss, the cooked root could be molded into patties and carried on hunting expeditions or war parties.

—http://montana.plant-life.org

WHEN THE THIRD ANGEL blew his trumpet, a large star burning like a torch fell from the sky. It fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The star was called 'Wormwood' and a third of all the water turned to Wormwood. Many people died from this water, because it was made bitter.

—Revelation 8:10-11, Bible

ABSINTHE, I ADORE YOU truly!

It seems, when I drink you,

I inhale the young forest's soul,

During the beautiful green season

—Raoul Ponchon

THE FIRST STAGE IS like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things.

—Oscar Wilde

FOR THE LIPS OF A STRANGE woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

—Proverbs 5:3-5 King James Version, Bible

COLD WAS THE NIGHT, and hard was the ground....

Why wasn't God watching?

Why wasn't God listening?

Why wasn't God there for

Georgia Lee?

—Tom Waits, Georgia Lee

August 24, 1981: Elan

WHY WASN’T GOD WATCHING?

At first light, shivering as soon as he began to unsheath himself from his crackling but efficient space blanket, he left his barely dry clothes and runners on the grass, tented by the shiny foil blanket. He was grateful for its invention. Without its metallic efficiency, he might now be lying lifeless somewhere in the forbidding tangle of undergrowth around the lake.

His lard-white feet, clear of any callus, shirked the gravel shore, its sands already cold enough to whisper of ice in weeks to come. He knew he must, again, submerge. The prospect shook him, head to foot.

He swam furiously, windmilling arms to combat the cold. He swam exactly, not a stroke wasted, to where the Cessna had settled to the floor of the lake in last night’s interminable darkness. It pleased him, that a man so ungainly as he could nevertheless accomplish a ghastly task with such exactitude. He imagined the achievement warmed him a degree or two.

She seemed to greet him, lovely blue eyes open but a little darkened, as if by thought deeper than was her wont. Her blond hair floated charmingly, wisps curling around her cheeks and ears. A smile framed the rich young mouth, the crooked teeth he had meant to pay for straightening. She looked at him and smiled as if the kiss of death still held her, still made her life worthwhile.

He didn’t open her door. What if he could not close it again? He kicked around to the pilot’s side, crawled inside, reached across her lap without thinking about the past, and worked at the seatbelt buckle.

The hasp unlocked easily, quite unlike last night. Victoria’s lap began floating up, and further up, bubbles of who knew what kinds of gases drifting lazily out from under her. He held down his disgust and jammed the buckle back into its slot. Farting. Dead, and still farting. Not quite ladylike, is it, Vicky-leh?

He had to surface. His lungs would jump out of him, so eager were they for the fresh mountain air. The pine-scented breath of God, he thought, gasping it in. Precious air! It fluffed up the quilt of morning fog that lay unruffled on the still face of the shadowed lake.

He was too fastidious for a medical student, he realised anew. It had been a good decision to leave that course of study. Truly, only poetry and music were the native citizens of his world. The hard and horrible realities of organic life and death were too much for a sensitive soul to handle on a daily basis.

Dear Victoria. She had supported him completely in his decision to change his course of studies to literature. He contemplated what a beautiful soul she had, what a wonderful wife she would have made. Too bad, he thought, that we are such mad bundles of flesh.

She would want him to go on. To get over his grief. To accomplish the dream they had half articulated. The thought armed him; he packed his lungs with air and surface-dove again. The plane seemed further down this time, but he knew it was an illusion. He drove his right hand behind the pilot’s seat to grab Vicky’s purse, and their duffle bag, their stash that had been meticulously packed to see them through their first few months of heady freedom. The bag bumbled into the pilot’s seat as he ripped out the transponder and anything else on the dash that would yield to his sudden rage. His left hand flailed behind the pilot’s seat for his sports bag, finding the ice-cold plastic handle just as the last of his breath bubbled up from his contorted face. Airless, he faced his love for the last time.

She still smiled at him, eyes winking like lit amethysts in the strengthening light. Live on, his starved brain thought he heard her say. His eyes confirmed that bubbles indeed were leaving her blued mouth, just as they leave the mouths of living speakers to be seen by only the chosen few. Live on for both of us.

Why doesn’t God listen?

He kicked up and away as hard as he could, her purse around his neck and both bag handles clutched in his left hand, the heavy burden threatening to reverse the balance of gravity on him every second. He had to kick and scull, one-handed, all the way back to shore. Amazing, how warm he felt in the last strokes. But the heat faded immediately, before he could fling the unwieldy space blanket around himself. By the time he found the waterproof matches and shakily struck one against the pile of kindling he had assembled before the swim, his flesh had chilled enough to tell him he himself would pass to the cold world within minutes if he did not create warmth. Backed by the blanket, he toasted first one side of his plump body, then the other, and finally the bits between, annoyed by the sense of being cosmic toast, by the necessary ritual of keeping a body warm.

He came to his senses just before his feet burned in the fire. He tucked each foot up into the opposite, still-damp pant leg, and warmed the runners instead. When at length he edged stiff dried socks onto his feet and jessed this configuration gingerly into his heated runners, he found tears