Ariel's Crossing (31 page)

“You wouldn’t know how to find the place without me.”

“That’s why we’ve got to come along. Because without you I’m afraid I’ll never find him, and I’m so close.”

Though he had no idea that this young woman had never so much as seen this father of hers, or spoken with him, Delfino was moved by her words. Both men looked at her sitting at that same kitchen table, her eyes red, her shoulders dropped in exhaustion but also in a kind of defiant commentary, hair wild from the night’s having blown and eddied it during the long drive, car windows rolled down to let in the cooling wilderness wind. It was the end of the discussion. She slept through what was left of the day on the old man’s bed, which smelled like damp raffia, as Marcos dozed on the sofa, his legs draped over the arm of the broken thing. When they woke, they found that Delfino had made them an afternoon breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. By six that evening they’d stowed supplies under a dun tarp in the flatbed of a borrowed truck, loaded the horses rented under false assurances into a trailer, and, like a landbound ship of fools, started for their entry point, arriving just before sunfall.

As they moved out onto the dirt road, Ariel sensed that nobody belonged here, not even rocketeers and ranchers. She shook her head to fend off misgivings. No need to think backward when everything was flying forward. But her worried eyes gazed both forward and back with democratic dismay. Who was it who’d written that life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think? It all seemed fairly tragicomic to Ariel at the moment. Prompted by that faraway light they’d seen, the three of them looked around at one another. Nobody said a word. None was going to concede the faintest hint of fear.

It did occur to Ariel to wonder what was pushing her so hard. Was it stubbornness or was it love, something more than a daughter’s benevolent passion, or was it pure curiosity driving her now, the need to know? Richard of Saint Victor believed that to love is to perceive. Granna had told her that one, and Ariel liked it. She wanted to see Kip, if only once, in order to
perceive
the man. Kinship was a crazy law unto itself. This was madness, she thought, but all families were steeped in madness. Hers was no exception.

The riders made steady progress. They rode in loose single file, with Ariel following Delfino, and Marcos bringing up the rear with a ginger-colored packhorse on hemp braids trotting behind. They rode at an unhurried pace, so as not to attract attention should anyone happen to notice them. The highway had fallen behind, but there was always a chance that they’d encounter another rider or some kid four-wheeling the outward flats for a lark. Delfino still contemplated ditching his young companions. If he could make a break and lose them, he figured they’d be forced to retrace their tracks back to the main road. But the basin was all long vistas through these first miles until they reached the lava field, thus the likelihood of his being able to escape them was small. So he kept his eye on the path ahead, more or less accepting their presence here. Besides, he had to admit, part of him welcomed the company. Would have been better if it’d been Kip, but it was what it was.

He had seen all this grandeur before. Had seen the primordial sundown, the mountain ranges on either side of the hardpowder basin. Seen the birds jolting to their nests in a cactus trunk or some hidden place on the ground. He’d seen the walking rainstorm and afterglow at their backs to the east, where the sun would rise tomorrow, as always hot and rounding. And yes, he’d seen the flashing telemetry hardware on the southern flats. He knew there was a range center down there, west of Rim Rock. If that idiot Calder hadn’t absconded with his map, he could have pinpointed the location. As it was, he had to rely on memory. What the hell—it wasn’t like they allow the Bureau of Land Management to publish more than the most obvious unclassified sites in geological survey maps of the area, anyway. Gravel pits, radio towers. As if that were all there was out here. Once they crossed bearing R8E at T8S, from public to military reservation lands, the map Kip had taken probably was outdated, aside from topo contours and distances above sea level.

Between the three riders and the mountains lay the malpais, a badlands of ropy, blistered black lavastone all but impossible to cross, and in the nearer reaches were nasty clutters of mesquite and creosote and yucca whose pods chattered with dried seeds hard as teeth when skittish winds passed through. The cream light shone now like burned butter, collecting in lakes on the desert floor, and as it did, their faces were bathed in deeper dusk. Beyond this malpais, in a stone alley at the foot of those mountains, was the abandoned ranch at Dripping Spring, which they meant to reach before tomorrow’s sun.

Kip was on his way in, too, having ditched Delf’s truck, and as he walked he hoped that Delfino understood what he himself already fathomed. That Dripping Spring was, at this late stage of the so-called game, nothing more or less than an idea, a point of controversy. Not a human habitat, and certainly not home. Once upon a time, but no more. Maybe Delfino would realize there was no ranch up ahead, finally, to take back. Just petrifying timber, tumbled stone, adumbrations of fences. Whether Kip had overstepped his bounds by hiding from Delfino some necessities for the journey, or whether it’d been a childish act or even a selfish one, barely mattered now. He had enough juice in him to make his benighted way in, hell if he didn’t. He knew this was his berserk terminus, just as he knew it was the flagrant fountainhead of the nuclear highway. Why not finish things up in this godforsaken Eden, tasting the desert air like the methodical chameleon does on its noonday rock before it nods off into the nil?

“Wherth Ariah?”

Mornings were easier than afternoons, when fatigue toyed with her tongue and robbed her of sibilants and other sounds. Yet no matter what time of day, it was baffling which words mutinied and which fell amiably into place. Frustrating, too, to be forced to relearn what so recently was easy as breathing. Try again, try again.

“Where ith Ariel.”

Better. Once more, with soul.

“Ariel. Where is she?”

Bonnie Jean, as ever these days, hesitated. Not wanting to say the wrong thing, hoping to keep her mother calm and on track. “Nambé.”

“Why’s she in Nambé?”

No right answer came into Bonnie’s mind, though she took the question as another sign that her mother was continuing to make strides back toward health. Cognizance of what was happening around her, the doctors said. Engagement; recall. Her stroke had been finally assessed as a transient ischemic attack, known as a little stroke in euphemistic medical jargon. The electroencephalogram and CT-scan had revealed some unfriendly plaque, some thickening of her arteries, which Granna pronounced
art of ease,
knowing that Ariel would like the pun. Where was that girl? Her slur bothered the caregivers at the convalescent center, but her appetite for life seemed to have fully returned, and with it the rosy glow in her gin-blossomed cheeks. Back was the twinkle that had been subsumed under the dull cloud shadowing her eyes. Her smile was neither pinched nor crooked, as it’d been during those first days after the stroke. She was hampered but hardly stopped.

“Whereth Sarah?”

“I checked before, Mom. She hasn’t come in yet today.”

“Didn’d Ariel go … with her yestehday?”

This came as a surprise. Hadn’t she been asleep during all that? “Yes, she did. You want me to call them?”

Out of nowhere, she said, “Kip Calderth dead. She went to visit hesh grave?”

“We already told you, Mom. He’s not dead, and she’s in Nambé.”

Mrs. McCarthy said nothing. It was coming back to her now. Brice had flown out here a few years ago, hadn’t he? To meet up with his old friend. Less clear to her was why Ariel should have such a keen interest in Kip Calder, especially given that her grandmother was here in the convalescent center and missed her company.

“How long’s she going to—”

“It’s all pretty confusing. Let’s just focus on getting you home, why don’t we.”

“Whereth Brice?”

The impediment sounded biblical, which was just fine.

Bonnie Jean paused a beat, caught her breath. The problem of her private news brownout with Brice bothered her more than she would have liked to admit. To herself, her mother, anyone. Just when you’re supposed to pull together with your brother, she scolded herself, what do you do but chide him over something that isn’t, finally, your business? He was right, but also wrong about so much. More wrong than right, she thought, though she knew that this attitude wasn’t constructive, or even respectful of her invalided mother. Worst of all, it didn’t gratify whatever sibling demon lay behind the sentiment, hoping to chew on some tasty bone of contention.

“He’s very worried, and like I say, he’s coming as soon as he can get away.”

“He’ll come when he can.”

The sentence quite crisply spoken.

“I’m sure you’re right, dear. But let’s talk about you now. How are you feeling this morning?”

She nodded.

“Want to walk?”

“No.”

“They say you ought to walk.”

“I’d rather talk.”

“Let’s walk and talk at the same time.”

Daughter helped mother out of the chair, got her four-footed aluminum cane into her right hand, and, taking her thin left arm, escorted her out into the hallway. They strolled slowly, side by side. How well we know each other, Bonnie thought. She’s me and I’m her.

Only difference is a couple little nothing, everything things. Who made who—or was it
whom?
She could never remember. Who was old, and who was getting old? Different faces and bodies, somewhat. Different husbands—yes, for sure. Different taste in clothes, because look at her mother’s dislike of the housedresses that Bonnie Jean herself found both comfortable and rather attractive. Bonnie loved the Savior on Sundays, but her mother worshiped him every hour of every day of every week. Bonnie didn’t much care for alcohol—a watered-down mimosa on her birthday sent her as deep into her cups as she ever wanted to venture—but her mom just plain did. So, sure, there were differences. But Bonnie felt, this day, their kindredness, and said so. “I love you,” was how it came out. Very simple moment. The words felt good on her tongue.

“I love you, too,” her mother agreed through the difficulty of making her passage up and down the glistening corridor, which was oddly shadowed by her deepening concern over wayward Ariel.

In every creature’s death is the promise of your own. Kip hadn’t thought of that for decades. It was a truth back in the midfifties, when his father uttered the tenet, and it was still truth today. That the thought, simple enough in its wisdom, had been spoken by a man deeply involved in the production of apparatus that promised death didn’t preclude its veracity. To the contrary. Mr. Calder had known whereof he spoke. Walking along this hot sandy road, blinded by the light, his son remembered what had prompted those words.

The buck was already dead. Young Kip and Brice had found him down in Bayo Canyon, big muledeer with an eight-point rack, as Kip recalled, which made him about half their age at the time.

—What do you suppose got him? I don’t see any wound.

The beast had bled from its nostrils, and a thick dusty tongue protruded inelegantly over its teeth. Flies walked it and hovered in a feverish cloud above the carcass. Late morning.

—Heart attack, maybe, answered Kip.

—Deer don’t get heart attacks.

—You know nothing, boy.

Brice countered, —Do too, boy.

—Anything that’s got a heart can get a heart attack, okay?

—Maybe there’s something on the other side.

Together they rolled the deer over from left to right, Brice wrenching its hind legs and Kip the forelegs. The animal must not have been dead all that long, since there was still some flex and play in its limbs. The flies rose and scattered, then returned. No sign of any injury, though the boys noticed a bald patch along its tawny flank.

—What’s that?

Kip shrugged.

—Maybe it ate something, a rotten buffalo gourd or something.

—Buffalo gourd wouldn’t kill a buck and it won’t make one bald, either.

—But I mean something like that.

The two kids stood sentinel over the body, silent for a time. A lone hawk voyaged a broad thermal some thousand feet overhead. Kip remembered it had been one drought of a day, hot and mute but for the nazzing of flies, summer’s end then as it was now. He’d walked away into the shade of a squat black ponderosa whose top had been lobbed off by a lightning strike, then returned, breaking the silence.

—I got an idea.

—Count me out, said Brice.

—You don’t even know what it is.

—Whenever you get ideas about things like this, they never turn out good.

—Chickenshit.

—Like I say, count me out.

—Listen, it’s already dead, isn’t it? So there’s nothing we can do to change that, am I right?

—So then what?

Kip lowered his voice. —You know how they have those trophy heads up in Fuller Lodge?

—Forget it.

—Well, why not? Look how handsome he is.

—I don’t think dead deer heads should be on people’s walls.

—Where should they be? Out here where coydogs and buzzards and flies eat them?

—We ought to bury him is what we ought to do.

Kip laughed. —You know how long it’d take us to dig a hole big enough to bury this guy? Forget that. My dad’s got a hacksaw. We’ll come back down before dinner and cut off the head about here. Bleed it in that tree a couple days, scoop out the guts and stuff. We get us a piece of ply over where they’re building that addition on the middle school and saw out an oval for the mount—

—You got it all figured out.

—You with me?

—I already told you.

Without glancing at the corpse again, they began walking west up the canyon trail toward the Hill. After lunch, Brice accompanied Kip to the construction site, where they rummaged a piece of wood from the scrap pile, then returned to the spot where they’d discovered the deer. Several black crows winged away downcanyon from perches on the buck’s cadaver, and the cloud of flies had thickened.