By Bethany Schultz Hurst

Yes, there is a Paris, Idaho. No, it’s not very far from here.

Yes, there are potato fields adjacent. An ice cave whose mouth fills with mud in warmer months.

Yes, the man who sculpted Mount Rushmore was born nearby.

Yes, before Rushmore, onto a different mountain, he carved a tribute to
Confederate leaders.

Yes, okay, someone else technically finished that Stone Mountain; he only
sculpted Robert E. Lee’s head.

Yes, yesterday 31 white nationalists were arrested on conspiracy to riot. Yes,
that was here in Idaho, but, no, that was way up north.

Yes, there is ice shoved way back in the muddy cave even in Idaho’s driest
months.

Yes, taking a break from painting my son’s room, I scroll through the mugshots. Yes, I think mean things about their faces. Yes, I laugh at the insulting comments posted underneath.

No, you’re right. Laughter doesn’t diminish their danger.

But yes, they look blank and stony. Yes, I think I can tell just from looking that
they are dumb.

Yes, I keep taking the easy target.

Yes, I keep confiscating all of the Nerf guns that are gifted to my son.

Yes, when he was a baby I worried about a vacant look I sometimes glimpsed.
Yes, I worried something was lurking in that dark cave.

Yes, I was afraid I’d see that look on his pale, grown-up face in some awful,
awful picture.

Yes, my understanding of infant intellectual development was thin.

Yes, thank god, he is a sweet boy now who loves kitties, who thinks to help his limping grandfather up the stairs, though he’s not strong enough yet to offer real assistance.

Yes, we try to teach him to see his privilege, to watch out for traps of hate, for the lures that could reel him in.

But no, he cannot seem to keep himself from aiming soft Nerf bullets at the light fixture’s glass globe, at his little sister’s belly.

Yes, one day he will tower over me.

Yes, I am nervous about raising him in a state that seems to love its armed
militias.

Yes, at Stone Mountain the horse’s Confederate mouth is so big you could stand inside it to escape the rain.

No, that’s hypothetical. No, I don’t think you’d be allowed that close.

Yes, my son has promised me he’ll still be my boy even when he’s big enough to lift me off my feet. No, I promise, I didn’t prompt him to that speech.

But yes, I’m only painting one wall the deep teal that he selected and the other three a tasteful neutral.

Yes, I’m glad repainting gives me an excuse to take down the tacky sports car
poster he’d taped haphazardly to the wall.

No, at least I didn’t throw it away.

Yes, I thought I’d gotten the low-VOC paint, but still the smell is overwhelming.

Yes, I cracked the window. Yes, I realize how much I want control. Yes, I’m sorry,

we were talking about Paris, Idaho.

Population 667, it surprisingly does display a massive stone tabernacle at its
center.

Yes, I do have a friend who once booked a flight to Paris, Ontario, instead of
Paris, France. No, he didn’t realize until he arrived at the airport. No, I don’t
remember if he took the flight anyway. Yes, I like to think he did.

No, there is no opportunity for such confusion in Paris, Idaho, with its cropduster airstrip.

Yes, most of the nationalists traveled in from other states. Yes, the local news
outlets like to emphasize this.

Yes, the nationalists dream of Idaho as their homeland, as a territory imperative to reclaim.

Yes, they’ve been constructing that flimsy story for a while.

Yes, Paris, Idaho, is near a beautiful, massive lake, inside of which a cryptid is
said to live.

Yes, long, long ago the white settler who’d started that rumor confessed it was a “first-class lie.”

But yes, locals still argue about what face the cryptid wears: an otter, a cow,
walrus? Crocodile?

Yes, the sculptor preferred the colossal: blowing the real faces off of mountains, reshaping them into what he thought was a grander story.

Yes, he dreamed his thoughts were so big they could only be contained in such dimension.

Yes, now that I tuck my son into bed, I worry the VOC is getting stronger.

Yes, Mount Rushmore was blasted right into a mountain its Indigenous people consider sacred. Into something beautiful the wind and rain had long been making.

Yes, the sculptor was fond of dynamite.

Why, yes, he did have ties to the KKK.

Yes, the sculptor tunneled out a cave behind Lincoln’s face to house records,
some explanation of what he’d done.

Yes, he worried in the distant future the monument might not make sense.

No, the cave’s entrance isn’t through Lincoln’s nostril. Yes, I’d hoped so, too.

Yes, there’s always some half-baked design in Paris, Idaho, to lure the cryptid
from the lake. To see at last what kind of body it’s been hiding.

Yes, even the pioneers near Paris, Idaho, had hoped to trap him with a great
length of rope.

Yes, at the edge of the Pride celebration, the nationalists were crammed inside a U-Haul.

Yes, they were playing little army.

No, imagining doesn’t make them into something safe.

Yes, in the U-Haul’s mouth they pulled up gaiters over their faces, waited to be spit out with shields and smoke grenades.

Yes, now that he is finally sleeping, I am convinced my son is breathing toxic
fumes.

Yes, it’s usually late at night when I lose what thin control I wield over my worry.

Yes, my future son will tower over me. But I can carry him now to my room,
where I think the air is safer.

Yes, he is heavy. Yes, this is probably the last time I can lift him like this.

No, the sculptor didn’t finish Rushmore, either; he left that mantle lying for his son.

Yes, like many settlers he was good at wrecking a terrain and then good at
wandering away.

Yes, the beautiful lake near Paris, Idaho, gleams lower and lower each year, due to persistent drought and irrigation.

Yes, a marker nearby shows where the sculptor’s childhood home no longer is.

No, I can’t see my son’s eyes roving behind his lids.

I mean, yes, I can see his eyes are roving, but, no, I cannot see his actual eyeballs behind his lids.

Yes, there is a little light left here, watery and blue.

Yes, once we parked near where we thought the lake began—where the waters recently had begun—and walked and walked into the shoreline mist weighed down with armloads of towels and beach toys and food. The kids ran on ahead. For a minute, no, we couldn’t see them. Then there they were, at the water’s distant edge like they’d always been there, their feet and hands disappearing into mounds of shell and sand. The lake was so teal and vivid, who could need another story?

Yes, in low water the lake’s boat ramps all were closed.

No, we didn’t see anything moving underwater.

Yes, the lake’s own exquisite face sufficed.

Yes, I am still holding him.

No, I can’t know what dream he has vanished into.

Yes, my son is heavy.

No, he is not a stone.

No, I can’t imagine when I’ll be ready to lay him down.

---