Ariel's Crossing (38 page)

God, though, how they’d loved each other, those two. Kip young and rumpled, strong and restless, brimming with promise. Jessica striding down Amsterdam Avenue in her Dutch clogs and wide-wale cords, holding his hand with both of hers, scads of exquisite heat flowing between them. Brice found such memories painful to this day. Sure, he felt he owned a moral advantage over Kip, given that his politics had proved more sage. He’d been the one to struggle against Vietnam while Kip, like a sheep in wolf’s clothing, prepared to ship out any month. But Kip had Jessica. Theirs was a real romance.

Half ideologue, half defeatist, Brice was no stranger to grand concepts. Some of them he even managed to realize, despite himself. Jessica beside him was his wife; to this day he found that cause for wonderment. Their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, a memorable occasion they eccentrically celebrated on Ariel’s birthday instead of their municipal vow date, was behind them. A raucous dinner was held down in Little Italy at a restaurant where Ariel and her then-new boyfriend, David, had arranged everything. Dom Pérignon, antipasti galore, shrimp brochettes dell’Adriatico, fettuccine with squid-ink sauce, Brice’s favorite zabaglione with Marsala—a feast of celebration with a dozen toasting friends. Ariel had never glowed with more happiness. And back home that night, he and Jessica made love with the passionate abandon of lusty kids. He looked at her now with no less love, but was aware how these few years since that family meeting about Kip had softly weathered her. The brown hair of her youth, filamented with premature silver from as far back as her days at Barnard, had mellowed to a glowing white that reached her straight, strong shoulders. Her forehead had become more finely lined, and her dark eyes were underscored by half moons of shadow that betrayed the sleeplessness that lately afflicted her.

It was good to be going home to visit his mother. Shame it couldn’t be under happier circumstances. Last time he saw her, he’d pledged to return much sooner. Promises most easily made are always the hardest to keep. Ariel was out here, too, somewhere. Didn’t want to get in her way, but what he and Jess wouldn’t give to see her, talk a bit.

He’d tried phoning Bonnie during the layover in Dallas/Fort Worth, but no one answered. Probably should have let her know they decided to come immediately, even though she’d assured him all was well. Peering out the window into the evening, he saw mountains to the west, dotted here and there with small clusters of pinpoint lights, remote communities separated by vast reaches of uninhabited desert.

Far from the portal that framed Brice’s face, thousands of feet below him, Kip Calder waded along in that sere, shadowy ocean. No memories equals no regrets, he happened to be thinking as he strove forward. His credo during the war. What you refuse to remember you cannot rue. Kip’s images and those of Brice were naturally distinct, yet resuscitations of people and moments from their mutual pasts twined, like that budding willow they’d leaned against back in Chimayó.

Against the odds. Kip had made progress in his dubious trek. He was stumbling along at the base of the Oscuras now. The map, the compass, the sun, the moon—he was ever the tenable foot soldier. And in truth, he’d been in worse messes than this, had crashed a couple planes behind enemy lines, wended his way through jungle so thick it seemed the air itself had turned vegetable. Here he’d merely stepped on a watch-clock cactus and had several sharp needles penetrate the sole of his shoe, causing him to limp. His foot was probably bleeding in there but he didn’t sit down to have a look, for fear he’d be discouraged by what he saw. His lower lip was pasty and cracked, and it hurt as he breathed through his mouth. Had been out here a long time. Two days, was it? What did it matter. He was closing on his destination.

Maybe he was hallucinating again. That angel had disappeared, but now he could swear he heard people crying out his name. A man and a woman. And as the stars began to reveal themselves, two tiny white lights like two more earthbound stars began to shine not too far ahead of him, well below the horizon. Right foot forward, left planted foremost once more, the pilgrim progressed.

Sergeant James Carpenter was the kind of negotiator who could charm the rattles off a snake, but those who refused to be charmed risked getting harmed. That was the word on him at Holloman. He was a follower of rules, no-nonsense, a sharp base MP, not to be messed with. Sometime after midnight, Jim was ordered to duty. Cleared for high-security tasks, he hoped there hadn’t been an accident on the range, hoped they weren’t mounting a search and rescue. Having been through such ops before, he knew there was little satisfaction in discovering a debris field and dead airman. Twelve of them sat for the briefing. No mishap, but reconnaissance had picked up a single individual, apparently on foot, and a separate group of three, apparently on horseback, that had also crossed onto the military reservation.

This was never welcome intelligence. Often, however, it proved to be small beer. No contact had been made, nor any communication received. Likely scenario was that the intruders were not fully aware of the gravity of their risk. An advance unit was monitoring them at present. Since, by luck, no trials or tests were scheduled, the only immediate liability was their exposure to unexploded ordnance, a problem all would have to live with for the moment. Absent any evidence of espionage, the order was to watch and wait. As everyone at the briefing understood, the area impacted was not particularly sensitive. If some hunters had wandered over the fence hoping to pick off a gemsbok or even a mustang—crazy bastards did that from time to time—the modus would be to escort them back to the perimeter and provide them with a summons that the DOI could follow up on. In the event this was an antinuke civil-disobedience enterprise, another likely scenario, then normal procedures would be followed. Just watch, Jim thought. Bunch of garden-variety tree-huggers. The whole business was going to turn out to be nothing more than a big fat nuisance.

With three troops under his command, he moved out at 0200 hours in a land carrier outfitted with night-vision—didn’t bother with the fancy paraphernalia. Or choppers that might create more chaos and drama than the situation called for. They sped along the level interior service road, lighting up the yellow foglamps. It would be a couple hours’ drive before they’d come into visual range. The mood among the rangers was spirited. Going to bust some delinquents, always a worthy cause. Jim quashed the capricious atmosphere, however. Men who served under him served with dignity. His silence in the passenger seat inspired the MPs in back to refrigerate.

Last year was the fiftieth birthday of the A-bomb demo model, and they’d anticipated a real ratcheting up of civil disobedience, large crowds of protestors, crews from national television, and what all, but July 16 had come and gone without so much as a serious peep. The usual gang of peaceniks, aging longhairs with their pony-tails, antiwar eggheads, disenfranchised ranchers, a few local media types in their double knits and Tony Lamas. Hadn’t someone tried to chain himself to the obelisk monument out at ground zero? Escorted him off in bracelets, if memory served, and the story barely made the papers.

Never failed to amaze him how people thought they could change the world through acts like that. Protestors, for criminy sakes. Putting themselves and others in harm’s way just to underscore an idea that every man, woman, and child on the planet already understood? Atom bombs are hazardous to your health. So what else was new? Well, the other two outfits were deploying north and southwest of targets, and his team would be going to engage during daylight, after they’d had a chance to run checks up and down the basin towns with the local police, see if anybody was wise to anything.

Quite the breathtaking summer night. The sergeant felt calm with his men, armed and equipped, doing what they’d trained to do. He knew he would need his concentration later, so closed his eyes now and let his mind travel. Times such as this he often found himself wondering where she’d disappeared to, Mary Contrary—the sis he missed. He always suspected she was still in New Mexico, even before Johnny and Rose, the twins, swore they’d spotted her in a crowd at the feast of San Felipe. He supposed he hadn’t been the most conscientious brother, given the resources at his disposal. Most everyone was just a couple calls and a few keystrokes away from identification and locationing, unless they were professionally fugitive. He never initiated the query because, well, if she didn’t want to be found, he respected her wishes. He remembered too well how Mary and their father had argued, violently, about everything under the sun. Not that he himself hadn’t been guilty of bad behavior. Like Mary, he had thought many times about hitting the road, cutting out of Gallup, but he figured there were stayers and players, and he was a stayer. He had apologized to his father long since and they’d made their peace.

He wondered whether Mary wouldn’t come back one day, if only to visit their mother. Mary and Mom always got along. He pictured them sewing her costumes for school plays with that foot-cranked, squeaky Singer. That time she trod home from her first waitressing job, in tears because she didn’t know where the dessert spoon went, or how to fold a napkin so it resembled a swan, and Mom—who didn’t know, either—walked her to the library where they looked all that stuff up in a manual for stuffed shirts. If he could reconcile with the old man, Mary could damn well look in on her mother one day. God in heaven, how families defy logic.

Must have dozed off, since the driver now woke him up. Light was already mustering above, rarefied and tenuous.

“How long I been asleep?”

“Hour, not even. Nothing new happening. Just we’re getting up to speed on coordinates.”

Information was that the individual suspect would be picked up once his position was secured and the second team could get men into place for an expedient apprehension. The other group of individuals had, according to a preliminary report, established a base camp at coordinates that put them about ten, twelve thousand meters directly due east of the old Trinity blast site on the other side of the mountains—roughly 106 degrees 19 minutes latitude by 33 degrees 19 minutes longitude, it looked like from the shuddering topo spread out on his lap. It was confirmed that they were armed and to be considered dangerous. Their identities were unknown as of yet, and their objectives unclear. No attempt should be made to apprehend them until further information became available. Orders were to secure a perimeter around this encampment. Stay alert and covert, and communicate postyhasty any change in the situation.

Jim confirmed his orders. He had been up through here many times, knew both the valley and the Jornada with the intimacy of friendship, from Bingham to Organ, Oscuro to Engle. He once climbed Salinas Peak with some of the boys and stood looking out at White Sands due south and the malpais to the east. Pure snow and a kingdom of coal to right and left. Truly a wonder, something to behold. Despite what any bleeding-heart liberal protestor might say, the irony was that all the Defense Department agencies that utilized these lands were far kinder custodians than any strip-mall developer would be. Not that anybody would build, let alone shop at a mall here. But still.

He pinpointed their current bearings and located a wash gully up ahead that would let them drive in pretty close without being seen. It’d put them about a mile southeast of the old Montoya ranch near Dripping Spring—or ghost ranch, more like. Quite a ways into the range for a group of protestors or hunters to venture. Wonder whatever happened to the Montoyas. Remember those first briefings at the base, when the rangers were informed about these troublemaking ranchers who felt they’d gotten stiffed way back when. This Montoya’d been a famous curmudgeon for decades. Kind of sad. But everything depends on which end of the telescope you’re looking down, does it not, he told himself, and rotated into mode.

The rain diminished. The clouds burned off in castes and tiers. A hundred black-throated sparrows gathered in a tamarisk by the window, their birdsong like bells set swinging by a tacit, spirited wind. A service pole with crossbars looked like an ideogram inked against the lavender sky. The row of yuccas along the walkway mimed green porcupines with spiky quills lit by the ascending sun. A kestrel circled slow as the tip of a minute hand on a veiled clock.

She sat there peacefully, head resting against the back of the cushioned chair, with such a serene smile on her face that the young attendant thought only to place a comforter over her legs so she wouldn’t catch cold. Then, standing above the aged lady, she did something she hadn’t allowed herself to do since being accepted at the center as a volunteer. It wasn’t polite to stare at the infirm, and she’d been a model apprentice, sensitive to the patients and their need for privacy. But no one else happened to be in the room at that moment, and Mrs. McCarthy was, by all appearances, sound asleep. No harm could come of the innocent trespass of looking at her straight in the face. After all, she’d never seen someone this old up close.

“Mrs. McCarthy?” she whispered.

Yes, sleeping soundly.

The girl leaned in near enough to count her wintry eyelashes. She marveled at the ravaged skin, a watercolor version of a river delta painted pink on white paper, the fissures above her apricot mouth. Her delicate nose, the cartilage so thin that the sun afforded it a rose shade, the same color she’d seen in her own hand once when she cupped a flashlight against her palm in the dark to reveal her bones and veins. Eyes sunken, cheeks also. Terrifying, what the years do. The woman’s fragrance was soapy and musty at the same time, not unlike spring stink in the conifer meadows after the earth unfroze. Pushing away slowly and silently, the girl’s hands yielded the arms of the chair. Sometimes you just wish you could be a painter, she thought as she tiptoed from the room.

Later, she heard the news about Mrs. McCarthy. She cried, of course. Many at the convalescent center did. The woman had made quite an impression on them.

This time it was not Bonnie’s niece but rather Sarah Montoya who called her from the hospital to say, in a quiet voice, “No, the news isn’t good, I’m afraid.”