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Morton Marcus: You are listening to the Tantras of Gyuto Mandala recorded at the Gyuto Tantric College, Dalhousie, Himachal Pradash. And this is Tibetan music, and it ushers in a very special night on the Poetry Show. We are almost 100% poetry

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here but every once in a while we go off and we do some prose. And tonight, our special guest is Kirby Wilkins, the author of three books, a book of short stories, "Vanishing," the novel, "King Season," and now this week, the novel, "Quantum Web,"

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set in Tibet and Nepal. Kirby Wilkins is a teacher at Cabrillo College, he has been the creative writing teacher there for more than twenty years. Many students have gone away and have learned the arts of fiction from him, and he is also the person

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who organized and arranged and is the advisor for the Porter Gulch Review. And we will be talking with him right after I say that KUSP thanks Plaza Books for providing a grant in support of this program. Plaza Books is located at 1111 Pacific Avenue

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on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. They are no longer in the pavilion on Cedar Street. Anyway, I would like to welcome Kirby Wilkins. Kirby, it's great to have you on the show. Kirby Wilkins: It's good to be on the show, Mort. Again, it's

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been, I don't know, a couple years. Morton Marcus: A couple years, yes. Well, you got to put out more books. And we'll let that little drum roll release us from our Buddhist friends for a second. In fact that song to

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Mahakala is actually the basis of the picture on the cover of your new book, "Quantum Web." Why don't you tell us a little bit about the book, and I know that one of the reasons you're on here is, not only is the book out this week, but this Sunday

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there is going to be a special event in the Aptos Bookworks bookstore. Why don't you tell us about it? Kirby Wilkins: Well, the event is a book signing, Sunday afternoon, third of June, two to four o'clock, two to four in the

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afternoon. And as far as talking about the book, it's actually a hard book to talk about. I thought it- thought a good deal about how it came to pass over a ten year period and exactly why I persevered all that time, and I think partly that music is a

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good key. That music kind of scares me, I don't know about you. It comes from someplace else that I'm not really familiar with. And I think, in traveling in Asia and traveling in India and Nepal, I've made a number of- three trips there and

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lived for a while in Japan, I sort of got outside our culture a little bit. I don't know exactly what I saw, but it was certainly not our culture. And it kind of scared me a little bit the way that music does. But it also drew me, I think, to it

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very much, so it's been really a dominant force in my mind now for some years. Just those experiences in India and Nepal with Buddhism and witnessing the kind of strange chaos that is place like Calcutta or Kathmandu for that matter, and also an

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addiction to those mountains. I lived and taught for a while in Pakistan and then travelled in the Karakorams in northern Pakistan, and began to get a real sense of those mountains. And then later on, I went on a trek in the Himalaya. And so, my

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kind of love of mountains that I had out of Nevada and the Sierras was transposed to Asia in that way. So I think some of the book comes from those kinds of experiences. Morton Marcus: And one of your main characters feels the same

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way, right? He's hiked through the Sierras in fact, he is your main character, and now he has gotten that same love of the Himalayas. I can tell the people out there, which Kirby won't, this book, first and foremost, is a tremendous yarn. I mean,

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it's just a great story that will keep you riveted, it's a page-turner, as they say, and yet much, much more is going on there. This fear that Kirby talked about, the sense of a spiritual world that we just cannot comprehend here in the

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West lurks on every page, sends its dense fog into the imagination and into the prose style of every one of these chapters. Would you like to read us some of it? I know that the first chapter alone will have people running out buying the

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book. Kirby Wilkins: Well, let's hope so, yes. Sure, I can read you a little bit of the first chapter. I should also say that the- I read this first chapter one other time at Bookworks. And

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people afterwards were what? startled, I guess, by the violence in the first chapter. And I realized that that's the only violence of that kind of proportion, really, in the book, that the book really does deal on a kind of spiritual level

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with the implications of violence and what follows from a violent act. Morton Marcus: But there's certainly a sense of threat and Kirby Wilkins: Oh, throughout, right.

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terror. Morton Marcus: Yeah, I guess Patricia Highsmith is the master, or the mistress of this form, where she can write novels when nothing happens but you realize that you've gathered

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heart palpitations throughout the reading of the book. And certainly this is going on in this book. Though it may read like a thriller, it certainly is much, much more than a thriller, and is a vision of the universe which I find quite astonishing.

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Kirby Wilkins: Well, I should also mention that the protagonist is a nuclear physicist, and that bringing together of a kind of pinnacle of Western thought, physics, with a pinnacle of Eastern thought deep in the Himalayas is

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really kind of the genesis of the book, just to see what would happen. Then this is: CHAPTER ONE OF QUANTUM WEB He jammed his walking staff into the snow and dragged himself up,

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queasy with altitude and frowning with headache. A late spring snowfall made the way treacherous and now he was exhausted. High mountains had always cleared his mind in the past but this time it had given him nothing but a skull full of

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mud, throbbing with pain. Licking blood from his chapped lips, Jack Malloy stabbed the snow and stepped up, lungs burning. The staff, made of Asian hardwood and heaviest steel pipe, came from the Kathmandu bazaar like everything

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else he was carrying -- tent, parka, sleeping bag -- bought or stolen from foreign trekkers, even his shoes and heavy wool trousers had been occupied by other bodies and their ghostly odors were a constant reminder. He pushed up another step and

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then another, looking through the Polaroid glasses at the ragged pieces of white cloth, flickering in the black sky over Tibet. Prayer flags tied to sticks and jammed into piles of stone at propitious points all over these mountains. Stone

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prayer walls, stone shortens, stone hermitages, it was amazing, really, the persistence of these people. Their faith lived on stones since there was nothing else. He heard the flag snapping in the vicious north wind and then at last, he was

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descending into the dry Tibetan borderland. After ten days trekking with a sherpa and porters, Jack was alone for the first time, there was no chance of losing his way on a track, worn through the ochre colored hills and rumpled canyons by

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centuries of trade with India. Despite the long days of walking, he was still surprised at his presence here in the rain shadow of the Himalayas on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, stretching across Asia like a three-mile high roof. He

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descended perhaps two miles into Inner Dolpo when the horsemen appeared suddenly, as if conjured from the brilliant, empty landscape. It took a moment to realize that they had emerged from one of the dry gullies, two horsemen trailing a

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third pony saddled, but riderless. Jack and his sherpa and porters had encountered many such nomadic travelers and caravans during the last tendays. And at first, there was nothing about these men to alarm him, except for the rifles

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carried alongside their saddles, and sherpa Pasang's dire warning about entering this forbidden region of Nepal. "No allowed," he said. "Only go one day," Jack had said, "go first village, sleep, come back. One day." "Bad men Dolpo, no go," Pasang

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insisted, "permit no allow." But Jack was damned if he would miss an opportunity to see the southern edge of Tibet and he finally prevailed. The trekking permit forbade them to enter but there was no one to enforce such prohibitions, and a day's

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traveling, nights spent at the nearest Tibetan speaking village, could do no harm. But the dog worried him. Accompanying the horsemen was one of the huge wild dogs that had attacked him in villages, and he'd driven them off with

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the staff gingerly at first, more viciously when he saw how roughly the dogs were treated by the villagers themselves. He took a defensive stance but the two horsemen called the dog back and talked with each other. Although Jack understood nothing

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they said, the language of the dog -- snarling, hair roughed along its spine -- was clear. Bad smelling foreigner, tear his throat out. Now, wearing a little frightened, Jack studied the riders. In Kathmandu, he had been warned about the Tibetan

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guerrillas fighting the Chinese along this border. Long tolerated by the Nepalese and armed by the CIA, they had turned to banditry and the area was closed to foreigners. One of the men dismounted and walked toward him, a squat,

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brutal-looking figure in rags. Jack smiled as much as his cracked lips allowed. The man gestured toward the third pony, the dog snarled, quivering with readiness. Jack held his smile. The bandit pointed at his pack and then at the ground, Jack got

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the point. He was being robbed. He tried to feign ignorance shaking his head as if bewildered, but the man stepped closer, and the last remnants of Jack's smile vanished. He could capitulate and hope to be spared any further indignity -- surely

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a foreigner's life was safe -- or he could fight. It was an absurd alternative but the man's gruff demand was infuriating, and since leaving India, Jack had been in an increasingly strange state of mind. His presence here on the far side of

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the Himalayas was so unlikely and perverse, that he lost any clear sense of his own actions. And now blocked by this bandit, he felt all the rage he'd kept bottled up since Bombay pour into his veins. He tightened his grip on the walking staff.

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Again, the man gestured to him to put down his pack. Jack slipped the straps from the shoulders, shifting the staff from one hand to the other as he freed his arms. Slowly, he lowered the pack with one hand, holding the staff with the

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other. The horsemen stooped toward the pack, reaching out a hand that looked like a club, swollen and cracked from exposure. As he leaned forward, his hairy face vanished from view, and jack was left staring at the coarse wool hat covering

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the top of his head. Jack stepped forward, the smooth wood sliding through his hands, arms locked for maximum force. Although the wool cap cushioned the blow, he felt the man's skull crack. With an amazing roar, the dog lunged as though

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released from compressed springs. Jack met the animal head on with the staff held in both hands. It was like being struck with a boulder. Jack recovered before the dog could leap again. Sliding both hands to one end of the stick, he

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swung it like an axe. The dog's four legs snapped and went down screaming. The man on the ground did not move. Jack stood very still. The mounted horseman held a rifle pointed to this chest. A long clip of cartridges extending

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below the barrel announced an automatic weapon. They stared at each other and Jack waited, why didn't he fire? The dog screamed and scrambled up on three legs. The man on the ground was motionless. Jack and the armed horseman continued to stare as

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if neither knew what to do next. For the first time, Jack noticed how badly disfigured the horseman was. His cheekbone crushed as if from a heavy blow, the still livid scar running from eye to chin. The face staring at him was slightly

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tilted, almost bemused. Last, Jack did the only thing he could think of, he reached for his pack. He crouched, keeping his face turned up toward the horseman and rifle and dragged the orange pack toward him. As he retreated, the horsemen rode

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forward and dismounted, as though in a choreographed dance. The man put down his rifle and drew a knife from his belt. Staring at Jack with an angry face, he jerked back the dog's head and slit its throat. The screaming stopped, his blood

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gushed onto the stones. Jack waited for the rifle to be picked up, for the burst of fire and for more blood. At this range, the sound of the rifle and the shock of the bullets would appear simultaneous. Although the bullets would

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arrive first, he remembered stories in which people were shot before they knew they had been fired upon. He was mildly surprised to find himself considering his own death with the same impartial interest he had accorded the dog's

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execution. These events seemed vaguely familiar, as if rehearsed for a play long since forgotten. The rider put the knife back in his belt and began to drag his unconscious comrade to his horse. He had difficulty pushing him up over the saddle.

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Jack was inclined to help but thought the gesture might be misinterpreted. Swiftly and surely, the man ran a rope from his companion's feet under the horse and around his shoulders as if he had performed this act many times. He hung the rifle in

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a rope sling beside his saddle and stared at Jack as if there'd been some terrible misunderstanding. Then he mounted and trailing the other two horses, the unconscious man tied over the saddle of one, the other still empty. He rode back

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to the invisible ravine from which they had emerged. The dog heaved convulsively and silently on the bloody ground. Finally, it lay still, tongue lolling in blood, teeth exposed in protest, wind whipped its fur and weathered on the stones. But

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otherwise, the country was still and silent in the brilliant late light of the high plateau, long shadows stretched from the stones. Jack dropped his staff beside his pack and then sat down

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himself, his heart flickering. His dream-like flight from India had terminated here. The dog was dead, the man also perhaps; he should be dead himself. Twelve days fleeing from Bombay had ended. By now, Mukherjee(?) had returned to Berkeley without any

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explanation for Jack's absence, but he'd lost the ability to think sequentially about the last two weeks. His mind was like a shattered mirror, and the splinters were cutting through his skull; it was the altitude. He had to get down from the

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pass, even a thousand feet would relieve the pressure. He had to get down to the village, but he remained among the lengthening shadows of individual stones. The dog's blood blackened like tar and was covered with grit, small flies drank from the filmy

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eyes. When a quick shadow moved across the upper slope, Jack was slow to understand its significance. He looked up, an enormous Himalayan vulture was working the updrafts above his head, waiting for him to abandon the dog. His hands still

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vibrated with the collapse of a human skull. Bone had burst into the man's brain like the brilliant shards of pain glittering in his own mind. He figured out in a minute, the reason he was sitting on the Tibetan border with a dead dog,

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Bombay was the reason. The first International Congress of nuclear physics for the future of the third world was the reason. He and Mukherjee(?) had been invited from Berkeley to Bombay to talk about the future of developing nations. Sitting

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at long hardwood tables inlaid with ivory and vast marble lecture halls hung with brocades and silks, attended by swift silence servants with white gloves who served pots of tea and flaky pastry while air conditioned currents carried the

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scent of clothes and incense to their nostrils. They had talked as if particle physics were the hope of the poor countries. A red carpet had been rolled down the steps of the hotel welcoming the new Raj to India, the nuclear Raj, the new masters of

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the universe, Soviet and French and German and American physicists, riding elephants together like maharajahs, and then reading their papers about high energy physics. But outside the hotel, bullocks pulled crude wooden carts and barefoot women

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gathered dung for fuel. But what had that to do with a dead dog? He looked back toward India but saw only bare rock and snow, a blasted landscape, denuded and debased by the humans clawing at the slopes like people trying to save themselves from drowning,

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clinging to the edge of these inhospitable mountains. A tide of Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists crashing out of the plains against the mountains, stripping vegetation, eroding the soil. And he'd fled Bombay over those blasted hills only to

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end here at the edge of Tibet. Beyond this frontier, the Chinese had obliterated one of the great spiritual centers of the world, denying Tibetans even that solace for their wretchedness. On the Indian side of the mountains, faith dragged

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humans deeper into poverty. On this side, oblique rationalism denied any reason to live. The shadow passed below him, he looked up. The bird was nearly eye level and much closer. The tantalizing smell must be rising on the same currents of air that

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supported the bird. The river canyon far below was dark in shadow. It was much too late to return over the pass to where Pasang waited, he must go on to the village. Pasang had been adamant that he should not sleep alone and exposed in this

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desolate land. "All right," Jack said to the bird, "he's yours." He stood, staggered under the pack, and balanced himself the accursed walkingstick. According to the survey of India map, the village was down in the dark crease of the canyon. Only a

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whim of colonial mapmakers had included this fragment of Tibet and Nepal since the Chinese invasion was all that remained of Buddhist Tibet, and likely all the Tibet he would ever see. Beneath a brilliant roof of sky, he descended into evening

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shadow. The vulture landed. Once again he heard the dog scream and felt the skull give. In crossing this highest watershed in the world, he had crossed a watershed in himself. All his years of physics and zen meditation to cultivate humility

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and an open mind had come to this, all because of the fucking Bombay conference where Indian technocrats wanted to hear about fusion and plasma, superconductivity, hydrogen power, and did not want to hear Malloy talk about frontiers of

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mind. Particle physics is paradigm, an exploration of mind, who needed it? The Hindus already understood the mind, they didn't need physics for that. And they expected better from the man well-known for tracking the elusive quark.

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Mukherjee had commiserated with him but Mukherjee behaved very strangely in India. The moment they stepped off the plane in Bombay, the harsh skeptical patina of the experimental physicist had dropped away, as if on returning home Mukherjee

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had entered a mysterious force field that made him soft, almost limpid in his manner, garrulous and as naive as an undergraduate. He blandly ignored India's dangerous scheme for plutonium self-sufficiency, its lack of safeguards, the

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whole haphazard mess, the very things that would have driven him crazy at the lab in Berkeley, were now only quaint native folkways. The aloof Mukherjee even became a popular speaker at the conference and an inebriated racontour in the late

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evening while Jack grew increasingly morose and isolated. Finally, the technocratic buzz of plasma accelerators and fusion that sent him wandering in the nether world of Bombay slums alone, where people in rags carry their

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filthy cardboard homes like precious treasures. They defecate in alleys, bathe in squalid puddles, lay dying in doorways, while his colleagues talk particle decay and superconductivity. He gave all his rupees to lepers, beggars,

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and deformed children, but when the rupees were gone, their fingers continued to pluck his body, as if to strip away his flesh. He seemed to draw these people as a corpse draws vultures, and he finally retreated to the hotel

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frightened, sweating, and stinking from the streets. He found Mukherjee vibrating with health and conspiratorial energy. He had a secret. "Not a word, Jack, to anyone." Jack's eyes burned with the open sores and feces and twisted limbs and

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distended bellies and gaping mouths that had sucked him into a vortex of misery, Jack, the nuclear Savior. Mukherjee was insufferably insensitive to his state. "Jack, they have a device." "A device?" "They're going to detonate a device in

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the next few weeks." "A device?" "About ten kiloton." This fat, complacent, lapsed Hindu bubbled with the light that his countrymen has succeeded in using their nuclear power capacity to devise an atomic bomb in the birthplace of Buddha

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and Gandhi. Dazed from the heat and stink of the streets, Jack tried to comprehend, "You dumb fucker," had he actually said that? "What are they going to do with a fucking bomb?" "It's symbolic." "Symbolic? You asshole. What do you think

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Pakistan will do? Iran? Iraq? Do you know what this means?" Mukherjee's manner was very English, very Cambridge. To call him an asshole was unthinkable but there it was. Mukherjee had flushed, stuttering, caught between his pride and conspiracy

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and the sudden anger from his friend whom he had honored with the secret. Mukherjee remained enough of a Hindu to appreciate that the universe must self-destruct many more times before humans are enlightened, even lapsed Hindu physicists

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trained at Cambridge and Berkeley. So what was one nuke more or less? Mukherjee's face decayed into confusion and hurt, and he was near tears when he left the room. About fifteen minutes later, Jack left the hotel carrying a suitcase,

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passport, and traveler's checks. He left a terse note at the reception counter, "Go home without me. I'll be in touch." He had to get away from this betrayal of physics, from the heat and poverty and he headed north by instinct. North was

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cooler, North was mountains. He flew straight to Nepal as if following a radio homing beacon, but Kathmandu's lush spring at five thousand feet wasn't sufficient. The Himalaya is pulling forward like a magnet, and in only two days, he'd

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arranged a trek into Western Nepal, rather than along a popular route to Everest or Annapurna. He didn't want to see another foreigner. He wanted solitude. He wanted to push himself to the edge of the void and see what voices spoke to him

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there. He wanted to do penance for being a physicist, for being human. And so he left the approved route behind Dhaulagiri massif, and dropped right over the edge into the forbidden land called Dolpo. Less than five miles from where he left the

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dead dog, terraced fields appeared in rough geometrical shapes of human habitation, the same color as the bare land -- flat roofs, stone walls, a wisp of smoke -- no dogs. It was the first village of the Tibetan frontier region. People appeared

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as they had in other villages, but these were somber and unsmiling. And for the first time, it occurred to him that he might be unwelcome here. Pasan's warnings rang in his ears, "Bad people Dolpo, no go." He was alone without language among

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people who could no longer trade their wool with Tibet or winter their herds there, and whose animals had died as a result. Their monasteries had fallen into ruin, and bandit guerrillas armed by his own country roamed their desolate land. Debased by

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deprivation in a harsh environment, they stood stolid, unsmiling, filthy. And in their faces, he saw himself reflected: a foreigner descending from another world, physics would serve no purpose here.

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Morton Marcus: That was Kirby Wilkins reading the first chapter of his new novel, "Quantum Web," which is out this week and which he will sign copies of on Sunday at 2pm at the Aptos Bookworks in the Rancho Del Mar shopping center.

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We will return in a few moments. This is the time for our musical break and we will hear other pieces by Kirby and talk to him more about the novel. This is the musical break and here we Kirby Wilkins: [Cut off] - o I wasn't really cut out fo

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go. it. And I think what I realiz d recently is that in ta Morton Marcus: Well, you also lived where tests were going on king to my students, there's n t the kind of obsession that I

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felt with, and I don't know abou you, with nuclear weapons or nuclear holocaust. It's th re, people are aware of it, and yet- I asked my students w ether they wake up, you kno , dreaming about it, or whet er they're haunted by it, and

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they don't seem to be. It's a fa t of life, but it's not a- it lacks some of the force which I personally felt grow in the 50s and- Kirby Wilkins: Right, the Nevada Tests.

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Morton Marcus: Right, and we also experienced both in the 50s in separate parts of the coast t e building of bomb shelters in b ckyards, and things like that. Kirby Wilkins: And, of course, the shock of Hiroshima, that

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comes out in the New Yorker, the Life Magazine photographs of Bikini Atoll explosions, the ones right in Nevada right next door. And so there was this kind of constant sense of nuclear presence that it was a very real thing. And it really occupied,

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in a way, it came to occupy my mind in sort of- in place of an other kind of deity having grow up pretty much outsid Christianity. This presence sor of has been with me all my life I think, so that what we have i this book with Jack Malloy as

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man who is responsible, to som extent, for nuclear weapons o feels responsible and comin into contact with a whol other way of thinking. And it trikes me that if there's any ay out of nuclear armageddon, t has something to do with the

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uman mind and enlightenment of he human mind. And it's nteresting to me to have read ust the other day that there's ome concern in the State epartment who's communicating ith Russia, who has similar oncerns, about a possible

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uclear war between Pakistan and ndia, which is going on right ow, apparently, as both sides re sticking out positions over ashmir, and no one knows how any weapons they have, if they ave weapons, and whether hey'll use them but it's a

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rightening prospect. And the ook I wrote was 1974, set in 974, and this is sixteen years ater that these events may yet ome to bear fruit. So it's a ind of reminder that's with us nd hasn't exactly gone away ecause of the end of the Cold

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ar. Morton Marcus: Right. Well, I think in the last year, that's what I was going to say, we tend to think that everything is hunky dory, as they say, and what you said about the tension

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in Kashmir, or around Kashmir, really illustrates that at any moment something can just go p p, and that certainly can be one of them. You're saying also, the State Department's very con erned about bombing racks that hey'd seen put on-

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Kirby Wilkins: -put on Pakis ani warplanes, which are capabl of carrying atomic weapons. And again, the Indians have de ied that they have developed wea ons after this explosion in 1 74. There seems some widesp ead skepticism about that, tha

00:29:15.710 - 00:29:27.720

in fact they do have nuc ear weapons. Whether Pakistan has successfully tested the is still not known, so the e's- considerable mystery re ains around this sub Morton Marcus: Yes, supposedly Gaddafi was shipping a lot of

00:29:27.720 - 00:29:45.150

money and having material shipped into Pakistan as I remember. Well, it's one of those times, I remember in your book of short stories, "Vanish ng," this was even a subje t in, "Vanishing," and the sa e kind of atmosphere of th

00:29:45.150 - 00:29:58.740

eat was in a story called, Sign." Kirby Wilkins: It's in that story very explicitly, and in other stories more obliquely, in a certain sense of desolation, which again, I think comes in my mind out of growing up in the

00:29:58.740 - 00:30:15.270

50s, in a sense that one was not really going to make it much past the 50s, or in any case 60s, and I'm very surprised to have made it to the 90s now. It honestly never occurred to me that, you know, we would be here talking in 1990. [Cross talk].

00:30:15.300 - 00:30:25.400

Morton Marcus: I seriously do think a lot of people are very surprised. Kirby Wilkins: And I think something- that imminent desolation lies in some of the stories. Flannery O'Connor said

00:30:25.400 - 00:30:41.690

that any writer writing in the 20th century, whether they're writing in the remote wilderness of Georgia, doesn't make any difference where they are, they can't escape the fact that Hiroshima happened, and anything they write is informed by that

00:30:41.690 - 00:30:52.330

knowledge. And I think that's the case in certainly some of the stories in, "Vanishing." Morton Marcus: Yeah, well, I remember, "Firebird," alone ends with a vision of apocalypse, the city, the light over the city

00:30:52.330 - 00:31:07.490

seems like the city is on fire at the end of the story as the car races to it. Kirby Wilkins: In an odd way, tied up with perhaps Tibetan Buddhism is some sense of the nuclear weapons, nuclear

00:31:07.490 - 00:31:25.670

explosions, being just a shade this side of enlightenment, that in some funny way they're tied up, they're both products of the human mind. And I can't really explain that, it's a more mystical feeling but the- it is just one slight wrong turn led

00:31:25.670 - 00:31:43.370

to the bomb instead of enlightenment. And I think modern physics has begun to speak increasingly in terms that are familiar or similar to mystics of the East. And it's an odd convergent track, it seems to me, and that's the track I

00:31:43.370 - 00:31:53.280

really tried to explore in the book. Morton Marcus: Would you like to read one of the stories that we've just been talking about from that? Kirby Wilkins: Sure, maybe, "Sign," would be appropriate to

00:31:53.280 - 00:32:16.050

give some sense on American soil- Something of this concern as I see it, the story came, grew out of a photograph in the San Francisco Chronicle of a sign, which I won't tell you what the sign is since it's cited in

00:32:16.140 - 00:32:26.040

context of the story. Since writing the story, I've been to this place and I'm really pleased to discover that it's very much as I had imagined it in the story. The story is called:

00:32:26.060 - 00:32:38.120

SIGN "Turn it down!" Adele shouted, but her daughter paid no attention, apparently not hearing. And whatever electric punk noise she was playing continued to blare into the

00:32:38.120 - 00:32:51.350

desert air. Only when her mother actually stood over her, casting a shadow, did she turn it down. "Use the earphones or else," her mother said. Of course it was just the opposite problem with Ronnie, off riding his Honda over the desert hills, you

00:32:51.350 - 00:33:03.110

couldn't get him unplugged, you couldn't break into his world whatever gunk he was pouring into his head, no matter what you did. The earplugs could damage hearing she knew, between that and her sanity, there was little choice: her kids would be

00:33:03.110 - 00:33:17.360

deaf with all the rest. It was hot, but different from LA hot, no lid of smog, of course. But there had been another invisible lid, pressing her down all year, and now Mount St. Helen's blowing up. And all these strange earthquakes, this

00:33:17.360 - 00:33:28.010

anti-nuclear business again, just when you'd forgotten about it. Leroy didn't want to hear about it, his job, she understood that. But those horrible stories about the Hiroshima survivors, you watched their faces and listened to

00:33:28.010 - 00:33:40.910

their voices and you knew they had been there when they told how survivors had walked from the blast horribly burned, pieces of their bodies hanging from them but in absolute silence, even the children, a long line of people making not a

00:33:40.910 - 00:33:53.030

sound. It became obsessive, you couldn't get it out of your mind after a while. You felt so trapped and helpless in the city, she needed to get away. Leroy poked his head out of the trailer and said, "Hell, you can't get the damn Dodgers in

00:33:53.030 - 00:34:05.060

this canyon even with the extension. I knew we should have kept going." "We didn't come to watch TV," she said, "why don't we take the kids for a swim? "Swim? Where the hell are you going to swim? That was a mud hole down there." "There were

00:34:05.060 - 00:34:16.490

people down there. Go get Ronnie." "Jesus," he grumbled, but she knew he'd do it. He always felt guilty on vacation. He knew it was time for the family to do things together. She waved her hand in front of her daughter's face, who gave

00:34:16.490 - 00:34:30.440

her the look and went on bobbing her body to whatever was coming over the earphones. She waited and finally, Sharon raised one earphone. "We're going swimming," Adele said. Sharon stared at her. "And leave that thing here." Again, the look,

00:34:30.710 - 00:34:42.890

but she'd do it. "Now could you get Ronnie off his motorcycle?" Leroy came out of the trailer wearing his bermudas and sandals looking very hairy and white in the brilliant light. "We'll have a picnic dinner," she said. "In this heat?" "Why not? Take the

00:34:42.890 - 00:34:55.640

umbrella." He grumbled but went off after Ronnie. You could hear the Honda screaming wide open on the sagebrush and see a tower of dust. After a while she made tuna and liverwort sandwiches, and mixed lemonade. She saw Leroy trudging back out of the

00:34:55.640 - 00:35:07.550

sagebrush. Ronnie passed him, spraying a cloud of dust over his father, looped the trailer and skidded to a stop in front. His face and clothes were covered with dust below the goggles and helmet. He took off the helmet, put the goggles

00:35:07.550 - 00:35:19.070

inside and sat there with a walkman plugged into his ears, grinning like an idiot in the bright sun, and waiting for her to tell him to quit making so much noise and dirt around the trailer so he could pretend not to hear. His dad came up behind

00:35:19.070 - 00:35:30.560

him and punched him on the arm, a good sign. Leroy had decided to be good natured about the dust episode. Ronnie followed him into the trailer, still plugged into the walkman. "We're going swimming," she mouthed at him and made a breaststroke

00:35:30.560 - 00:35:43.460

motion. But her son, dazed from the vibration of the bike and the dry air and dust and the music in his head, just stared at her. She reached over to his belt, punched the off and waited. He continued to stare at her, his version of "the look,"

00:35:44.090 - 00:35:57.380

and then unplugged his ears. She told him to get cleaned up and put on a suit. "I just assumed to stay here," he said. "You're going," his father said, "we're on vacation." By the time they were ready, she had the ice chest packed. Leroy pulled down

00:35:57.380 - 00:36:08.210

the blanket and pillows and umbrella, and she'd filled a big thermos with lemonade and ice. Ronnie wore his cut-offs and thongs, Sharon her new suit that she didn't like because her bottom was too big. But the suit also made her- made her breasts

00:36:08.210 - 00:36:19.550

look big and she liked that okay. She'd be bigger even than Adele, if she only knew the curse that would be. "I'll drive," Ronnie said. He wasn't old enough, but they let him practice away from town. "We're walking," she said, "it's only a

00:36:19.550 - 00:36:34.070

little away." He still wanted to drive but Leroy had had enough of his obstructionism. He picked up the ice chest and walked out the door. Sharon followed with the umbrella. Ronnie pouted a moment, considering the alternatives, and then carried

00:36:34.070 - 00:36:46.220

the pillows and blanket out the door. She shot the trailer and started down the empty two-lane road they had driven into the campsite. The area seemed very deserted, only the scrub trees and water faucets, a couple of other trailers and the bare

00:36:46.220 - 00:36:59.660

country all around. But it was halfway to Tahoe and it was so good to get out of the city. She felt springy, light, in the high altitude air. The family was strung out plotting for the strange creek they had seen driving in, barren and treeless

00:36:59.690 - 00:37:13.880

without grass, but there had been people in bathing suits walking toward it. When the family had bunched up, Ronnie said, "What's that smell?" They can smell it, sulfurous vapor, and saw steam rising along the distant creek bed. "Just what I

00:37:13.880 - 00:37:25.970

needed on a day like this," Leroy said, "a hot bath." Sharon wanted to know what made it hot and her father explained how the molten core of the Earth was almost exposed atr places like this. Now Ronnie was looking with interest toward the distant

00:37:25.970 - 00:37:43.040

creek. Where the road curved, a path led in that direction and a large sign faced them, "Dangerous area, scalding water, unpredictable eruptions, unstable ground, sporadic high pollution, sudden temperature changes, broken glass, arsenic

00:37:43.040 - 00:37:54.950

in the water. We recommend that you remain on paved and wood paths and do not enter the water." "Jesus," Leroy said, "we can't even go in the water." But his son was walking quickly ahead. "Sure you can," he said, "you can hear people in the

00:37:54.950 - 00:38:07.700

water." It was true. There were distinct splashing and shouting sounds coming from the invisible creek. Leroy and Sharon followed Ronnie, she watched her family vanish from view, as if they had walked off the edge of the Earth. And then she read the

00:38:07.700 - 00:38:22.730

sign. It did not seem possible that so many hazards could exist in one place. And yet her family had hastened in that direction almost excited at the prospect. She stood alone. The empty, hot, paved road stretched in both directions toward the west scrub

00:38:22.730 - 00:38:38.330

pine, the bare and now poisonous looking rock, the deserted looking trailers. To the east rose stark and barren hills, very symmetrical, that she now recognized as volcanic cones. At last, the reality of the place struck her, it was a region of

00:38:38.330 - 00:38:52.670

great upheaval. She remembered the enormous explosion of St. Helens, that it had been greater even than a hydrogen bomb, smoke a tower to the outer edge of the atmosphere, ash covered the land, weather was altered all across the country. She could

00:38:52.670 - 00:39:06.620

not believe they'd camped right in the middle of such danger. But the evidence surrounded her, dazed her, and feeling helpless, she followed her family toward the lethal creek. Wood stairs descend to the bank, splintery planks bleached by the sun and

00:39:06.620 - 00:39:20.030

poisonous fumes, and she looked down. A wooden walkway edged by iron railings flanked the water. There were many people in the water but you noticed first an old grandmother, hanging on to a life preserver and kicking her way through the smoking water,

00:39:20.390 - 00:39:33.560

wearing her bifocals, and smiling into the bright sunlight. Several smaller children floated in life rings. A man floated on his back, people waded among the boulders. Her own son had dropped his pillows and blanket and slid off

00:39:33.560 - 00:39:46.160

the platform onto a boulder. His sister hung from the railing above him. Leroy stood in the back of them, as if he'd been hit over the head or had heatstroke. He certainly hadn't expected anything like this. The people in the water seemed

00:39:46.160 - 00:40:01.310

cheerful enough, looked cool. She watched as their son lowered his legs into the water. "Isn't it hot?" Sharon asked him. "No, that sign was full of shit." Leroy said nothing. "What about the arsenic? The eruptions, the unstable ground?" she wondered.

00:40:01.790 - 00:40:13.580

But Leroy was setting down the ice chest, slipping off his sandals. She watched him move toward the water. Ronnie was swimming already and Sharon was in up to her waist. Adele sat down on the stairs above the creek. She watched her husband

00:40:13.580 - 00:40:25.640

enter the water. There were big bubbles in the water and sometimes big balloons of gas burst to the surface with a sound she could hear over the voices. Children squealed when the gas erupted beside them. On the hill above the creek, some

00:40:25.640 - 00:40:41.090

great violence and torn slabs from the earth scattered them like flakes, some had fallen into the water. The sky, a bleached blue, clamped down over them all. It was late afternoon. She heard her name, it startled her. Leroy was standing in the

00:40:41.090 - 00:40:54.470

water to his chest, grinning, waving up to her. "It's just warm," he said, "come on." She waved back but did not get up. She felt as though she had forgotten something absolutely essential to her life and she should remember it before she

00:40:54.470 - 00:41:07.670

descended to the hot creek. But the longer she remained, watching people frolicking in that hostile place, the less she was able to think at all. Finally she too moved down beside the creek, put down her thermos and slipped off her

00:41:07.670 - 00:41:21.230

sandals. The wood was hot and splintery underfoot. At the water's edge, she sat down, careful to keep her feet away from the water. Leroy was talking to the man next to him and gesturing at her, "Guess where he works?" he shouted at

00:41:21.230 - 00:41:34.940

her. She lifted her head indicating she'd heard the question. "New Mexico, he makes the warheads." She smiled at the man. Leroy had always wondered who made the business end of the missiles. Just the way the two men stood together, she could

00:41:34.940 - 00:41:49.250

tell they'd be drinking beer together this evening, playing horseshoes. Leroy had entered his vacation. He'd certainly have a good start on a sunburn. She saw one of the great violent slabs of rock submerged just below her feet; it was flat, big

00:41:49.250 - 00:42:04.280

as their king-sized bed. She stretched her toes toward it, felt the greasy warm water. The stone was solid and she eased out onto it, sat down. The water just covered her bottom. Again, she looked at the grandmother, still pushing herself around

00:42:04.280 - 00:42:17.900

with a life preserver. The kids, maybe the old woman's grandchildren, floated in their life rings. Her own children plunged like porpoises in the fire into the pool. Around her was a sulfur odor and something more sour. The arsenic? she

00:42:17.900 - 00:42:35.930

wandered. Downstream she could see the dead volcanoes. Then she felt it, the huge stone under her had moved, a distinct vibration like distant thunder. She sat very still, yes, the stone moved beneath her, as if it were breathing, a living

00:42:35.930 - 00:42:49.160

thing instead of a dead rock. She continued to hold her breath to wait, but nothing else happened. The splashes and shouts of children continued, the gas bubbled up, and then Leroy was wading toward her. "Twelve people have died here

00:42:49.160 - 00:43:05.630

since '68," he said, his voice had an edge of excitement. "He has a book at the trailer." "Only twelve?" she said. "Some others were injured." Again, the stone moved under her, an almost audible rumble, but she said nothing. "We'll go up to their

00:43:05.630 - 00:43:21.110

place to eat," he said, "they have the airstream." "Fine," she said. He moved away from her toward his friend, and she had a bizarre desire to stretch out on the stone. She felt oddly relaxed, almost numb in warm water and sun. She laid back.

00:43:22.010 - 00:43:37.880

The warm water supported her like a hand, half floating, half lying on the stone. Her mind closed down, the voices around her faded, her eyes closed. She couldn't believe how relaxed she felt, as though she were floating in her own backyard,

00:43:38.030 - 00:43:54.020

waiting for the evening news to come on. All these people, together despite the danger, even excited by it, their voices comforted her. And when she felt another tremor, so distant, it might have come from the other side of the earth. She let

00:43:54.020 - 00:44:11.910

herself go completely, drowsy under the sun. Morton Marcus: Yes indeed. As you read that, I was just thinking of the other stories and the imaging in it ,and it's common, everyday occurrences which suddenly become

00:44:11.910 - 00:44:19.830

terrifying, though nothing happens to them. There's the one story in there about the guy who comes back to his town to find that it is no longer there. Kirby Wilkins: Vanished, right.

00:44:19.860 - 00:44:33.540

Morton Marcus: Vanished. And that very, very meaningful allegory, really about how small California towns have just become mall heavens and everything like that. Kirby Wilkins: Yeah, I think it's that constant sense of-

00:44:33.690 - 00:44:43.600

that things can disappear at any moment, which has been hard for me to get out of my head. It certainly has crept into some of those stories. Morton Marcus: Well, I mean, you know I love that book. I think

00:44:43.600 - 00:44:53.170

it should have gotten a lot more distribution than it did, but are you going to be selling some of those- Kirby Wilkins: Yeah, there'll be, "Vanishing," available at the bookstore as well as some remaining copies of, "King

00:44:53.170 - 00:44:57.640

Season." Morton Marcus: In hardback right? Kirby Wilkins: In hardback. Morton Marcus: "King Season," both came out in hardback and

00:44:57.640 - 00:45:08.710

paperback, folks. The hardback now is left at a reasonable price. Kirby Wilkins: It is indeed. Morton Marcus: We have been talking with Kirby Wilkins, the

00:45:08.710 - 00:45:26.380

local novelist, creative writing teacher at Cabrillo College, whose third book, "Quantum Web," will be out this week, and again this Sunday at 2pm, he will be signing copies of the book at the Aptos Bookworks in the Rancho Del Mar Shopping Center.

00:45:26.410 - 00:45:34.470

I'll be there and- Kirby Wilkins: I'll be there. Morton Marcus: And Kirby will be there. We hope a lot of other people will be there to read this really very exciting and

00:45:34.470 - 00:45:47.820

provocative novel. And I just, well, you have anything more to say before we leave, Kirby? Kirby Wilkins: It's hard to be exciting and provocative, Mort. I appreciate those words. I hope it is both of those and I hope

00:45:49.140 - 00:46:02.070

it brings some sort of resolution, perhaps a mystical resolution, to the kind of nuclear dilemma. To my mind it points a kind of direction we need to go, or I need to go anyway.

00:46:02.990 - 00:46:25.700

Morton Marcus: I know you're working on something else. Does the next piece you're working on sort of go in a different Kirby Wilkins: It goes in a different direction, but it's se direction or-?

00:46:10.140 - 00:46:28.590

in, I guess, what is a simil r landscape now in the deserts f Nevada, and takes place in a small town casino. And I'm n t quite sure where that's head d at this stage of the game, but I think it won't deal o explicitly with the end of t

00:46:28.590 - 00:46:40.630

e world, maybe I've written th t out now. I can simply sit ba k and wait patiently for it o happe Morton Marcus: That will hopefully not happen. Anyway, again, Kirby Wilkins, 2pm, this Sunday at the Rancho Del Mar,

00:46:40.660 - 00:47:00.070

the Aptos Bookworks, where he will be signing copies of his brand new novel, which you heard the first chapter of, "Quantum Web." Let me once again announce, first of all, wherever I put it, there it is. That KUSP thanks Nicholas Van Angle for

00:47:00.070 - 00:47:13.180

providing a grant to help make this portion of the program possible. Nicholas Van Angle is a realtor in Carmel. Thank you so much, Nicholas. You and Plaza Books really are much appreciated by Joe and I and I'm sure the people out there who

00:47:13.180 - 00:47:31.300

listen to the Poetry Show. Let me also remind you of the Santa Cruz Art League's literary night tomorrow night, which is Wednesday and will it will begin at 7pm at 426 Broadway, which is the Santa Cruz Artists League's Ella Gray(?) Gallery. James D.

00:47:31.300 - 00:47:44.230

Houston, the great Santa Cruz novelist, so many of his works are set in Santa Cruz and examine the lifestyle and ethos in which we live in Northern California and particularly in the Monterey Bay. He'll be reading a chapter from his new

00:47:44.230 - 00:48:00.130

novel, Claire Braz-Valentine, whose play on Frida Kahlo has just closed, will be reading poetry and possibly some of the monologues from the Frida Kahlo play, and yours truly will be reading new poems. So we hope to see you there next week. Joe is

00:48:00.130 - 00:48:16.450

on vacation, and Patrice Vecchione will be taking over for him. Right now let me tell you to stay tuned for Larry Blood in "Out Front, Outback. We leave with the Buddhist mo ks chanting the end, or he beginning if you will, of

00:48:16.450 - 00:50:57.950

he wor [Buddhist monks chanting] Larry Blood: KUSP Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas. It's time now for the "Out Front, Outback" sh w. My name is Larry Blood. T

00:50:57.950 - 00:51:08.450

is program is made possible in p rt by grants from Logos Books nd Records. We appreciate th ir support. Logos Books and Reco ds is at Laurel and Chestnut acr ss from the Ice House in Sa ta Cr