Bewilderment

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I GAVE HIM A TREASURE HUNT about the Mississippi. Imagine you’re a drop of water as you made your way from a glacial lake in Minnesota down to Louisiana and the Gulf. What states would you float past? What fish and plants might you see? What sights and sounds would you hear along the way? It seemed innocent enough—homework I might have done myself, thirty years ago. But thirty years ago, it was a different river.

As he often did in those days, Robbie went a little over the top. The treasure hunt turned into a week-long excursion. He drew maps and diagrams, sketches of boats and barges and bridges, whole underwater scenes replete with exotic aquatics. Days in, he appeared alongside my desk in the office, holding out the enameled tablet on which he did his research. Requesting upgrade to the transponder.

“What’s wrong with it?”

Come on, Dad. You call it Planetary, but it’s just a little kiddie browser. It doesn’t let me go anywhere.

“Where do you want to go?”

He told me the things he was looking for and how he would find them.

“Fine. Use the ‘Theo’ sign-in today. But go back to your own account when you’re done.”

Goodie. You are the greatest. I’ve always said so. What’s the password?

“Your mother’s favorite bird. But flying backwards.”

His eyes pitied me for choosing such an obvious secret. But he went back to work, ecstatic.

He was subdued at dinner when we both knocked off for the day. I had to draw him out. “How’s life on the Mississippi?”

He spooned in some tomato soup from far away. Not so great, actually.

“Tell me.”

It’s pretty bad, Dad. Are you sure you want to know?

“I can handle it.”

I don’t know where to start. Like, more than half our migrating birds use the river, but they can’t because they’re losing their habitat. Did you know that? The chemicals that farmers spray on their stuff goes in the river, and that’s turning the amphibians into mutants. And all the drugs that people pee and poop down the toilet. The fish are completely doped up. You can’t even swim in it anymore! And where it comes out? The mouth? Thousands of square miles of dead zone.

His face made me regret giving him my password. How did real teachers handle this? How did they manage field trips down that river without faking the data or ignoring the obvious? The world had become something no schoolchild should be allowed to discover.

He rested his chin on his arm, on the table. I didn’t actually check this, okay? But other rivers are probably just as bad.

I came around the table and stood behind his chair. My hands reached down to take his shoulders. He didn’t look up.

Do people know this?

“I think so. Mostly.”

And they don’t fix it because…?

The standard answer—economics—was insane. I’d missed something essential in school. I was still missing something. I stroked the crown of his head. Somewhere beneath my moving fingers were those cells that the training had reshaped. “I don’t know what to say, Robin. I wish I knew.”

He reached up blindly to clasp my hand. It’s okay, Dad. It’s not your fault.

I was pretty sure he was wrong.

We’re just an experiment, right? And you always say, an experiment with a negative result isn’t a failed experiment.

“No,” I agreed. “You can learn a lot from negative results.”

He stood up, full of energy, ready to go finish his project. Don’t worry, Dad. We might not figure it out. But Earth will.