Undercurrents: a novel

Undercurrents

a novel

by Joan Maki

Undercurrents, the debut novel from fourth-generation Montanan, Joan Maki, steps through forest doorways and crosses rivers into twilight’s thresholds to dissect the emotional and psychological aftermath of Kit in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of Patrick, a childhood friend who vanished so suddenly it was as if he fell into the Earth. Decades after this incident, Kit escapes her rural Montana upbringing for a new life in the city, but her disjointed memories and the questions she has had to carry bind her to her past. Was Patrick claimed by natural forces, falling into the river or a ravine? Was his estranged father involved? Or, as old Marg believes, was the boy claimed by the people of the forest? Will Kit be able to find closure as she raises her own child and is inevitably drawn back toward the woods of home?

Imbued with elements of Finnish folklore, Undercurrents charts the liminal destruction of society and self, where wild and rural places are encroached upon by more contemporary forces. Like a story written on a warped mirror, Undercurrents presents a calm surface slightly askew, and definitely dangerous, where mind, lore, religion, and reality collide in uncanny reflections.

an excerpt from Undercurrents

1.  Trees

 

Patrick pretended to smoke a cigarette. It was November, 1989. We were ten years old. The trees were motionless. And time, momentarily, stopped. Frozen, suspended. Patrick breathed out the cold like smoke, fingers poised, grinning. His red knit hat was pushed back on his head. And there was the shattering of late fall snow and the white hollowing of the sky, like an upturned bowl. The river glinted black through the trees.  The trees stirred. There was no smoke. There couldn’t have been smoke. Why do I remember smoke?

“Race you, Kitty,” he said. He turned suddenly and ran ahead into the leaning cottonwoods. Kit ran after him. The earth crackled beneath their feet, as if it would break open. And what would be inside? A roaring depth? Lava, rising out? The sky through the trees was illumined. So bright it almost hurt to look at it. The branches were like graphite sketches. The cottonwoods formed a tunnel. We found a path and where from? Out of the depths then came a startling movement. Kit stopped. A bird or cottontail quickened out of the brush, shaking the undergrowth and then gone. And he was far ahead in the trees. A sliver of blue, cutting through the dark places. All sound ceased. The trees were angled above. Towering. Breaking through the sky. He splintered suddenly into the darkness between the cottonwoods. And the space around swallowed him. The knots on the cottonwoods blinked. What I saw there.

The sky burned white through the open spaces. Absolute quiet and all I could hear was my own breath. She stood on the empty path. Where from? Had it always been? The path was worn down although hardly anyone came down there. She did not recognize where she was. Everything inverted. Topsy-turvy, upside down. There were places where things get through, Marg used to say. Passages. You’ve got to leave passages. Open windows, unlock doors. Kit ran ahead, calling for him. The trees closed in around her. I felt them there. Darker and darker. And you were gone somewhere and I didn’t know where. The light was wrong. Same as during a solar eclipse. The shadows flung in the opposite direction. Reversed.

Kit ran up the path where he had gone. The path led everywhere and nowhere. She stopped.  She could not recollect where she was. Every direction the same. She walked slowly backwards, like Marg said to do. Like on a tightrope. Her hands out to her sides. The dark spots flickered like they were waking up. A silent, singular breeze passed her, moving the fallen leaves along with it. An invisible runner. Something pounded inside her. The drumming of the earth, we heard it, didn’t we? You and me? The trees felt like they were closing in around her. She closed her eyes, lightly. She sensed them dart past. Vaguely they flitted from tree to tree and then moved along the ground. Crossing over. Light to dark. And they were gone. They run from the light, Marg said.

The sound came crashing back. The shaking cottonwoods, river, birds. Raucous, immediate. She was right near the river. Roaring. Around her the woods were ordinary. And it was growing dark.

Kit ran into the open field, the cold burning her skin. She thought she could hear his breath at first, but then it was her own. Everything was mixed up. She looked back. The trees leaned gray in the dark. Their eyes and they were watching. Something nameless and feral stumbled through the brush and loped away. And here it was up beside me and I thought it was you and it seemed like you were there but it wasn’t and their hands like chokecherry branches and you were gone. The field was empty other than the rows of oats left still standing on the border, luminous in the darkening. They used to leave the grain on the edges of the field, she was told, for the gleaners. Way back when. Later she would recognize it in the painting of the women bowed over the fields. The gleaners. Sometimes someone needs a little help. Nothing to be ashamed about, Marg told you.

The Canada geese landed in the field. A cacophony. The honking drowned out everything.  The porchlight across the field was hazy. It seemed to move, like a lantern carried. The dead, carrying lanterns. Kit ran across the frozen earth. So fast she nearly tripped. The dead, looking for a place to settle down. She felt them like they were following her. The blood pounded in her head. Nothing is in plain sight. We don’t know nothing, Marg said. The canyon held the last vestiges of light. The wilderness right there and we don’t even think about it.

She climbed the barbed wire fence and the wire snatched and the front porch seemed to waver and tilt. The front door opened. She did not remember opening it. She closed the door behind her. Her father sat in the lamplight, reading the farm magazine. A shining combine on the cover. They could never have afforded anything like that.

Nothing is in plain sight.

Hands like chokecherry branches.

The way they folded into shadow.

He lowered the magazine and studied her. His hands were ignited in the light, like they were on fire. And I heard them scratching there and saw them slipping along the trees. Not for the first time.

“What’s the matter, Kitty?”

The blood pounded. The river in my head.

“I can’t find him,” she said. “We were in the trees and then everything was all wrong like it gets sometimes and he was way ahead and then he was gone.” And we had seen them crouched there and you had wanted to go with them. “The light was all wrong and switched like afternoon light and the sun going down and the trees like they were bent funny and then it happened. The trees took him. The maahinen. Or he went.” The pounding. The roaring. The river in my head and then it never went away. She kneaded her hands, aching with cold. Her hands would ache with the cold for the rest of her life. Turn pale and yellow and numb.

About the Author

Joan Maki was raised on a fourth-generation farm in western Montana. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Montana in Missoula.  She has an affinity for open spaces, dark nights, back roads, and forests. She lives in western Montana with her family. Undercurrents is her first novel.

Praise for Undercurrents