Ariel's Crossing (41 page)

“Virgin pregnancy. I thought that was unique to Jesus’ mother,” which caused her to laugh, or try to. Reminded of his own Mary—

Franny the Judas, or was that too bitter?—he had to wonder whether some betrayer had left Ariel in this jam, different from his, of course, but still a jam. He found himself wanting to help Kip’s daughter but had no idea how to begin or even if she’d let him. “None of this is my business.”

“Marcos, I’m feeling better now. Let’s pretend our talk never happened.”

Contradicting himself, he asked, somewhat more gravely than he might have wished, “You’re going to get an abortion?”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to meet Kip before I went ahead with anything one way or the other. There was a time when he and my mother could have aborted me, had every reason to. She would have had to go to Mexico to do it, or pay a king’s ransom for an illegal job. But obviously she didn’t. It’s crazy. I haven’t even told her yet that I’m pregnant. You’re only the second other person who knows. Lucky you, right?”

“You can tell me anything you want, don’t worry about it.” Marcos thought to ask what made her presume Kip had any insight into the matter, but she seemed to anticipate his question.

“Not that Kip knows about being a parent. Not that he should necessarily even care about me or my mess. I’ve come so far I barely remember what I was thinking when I left. It all seems pretty surreal.”

He patted her on the back. Inept fraternal gesture. Again he pulled his hands away from her in the dark. She hadn’t noticed, it seemed, any of these small conflicted movements.

“Have you ever found yourself at an impasse, where you really needed to make a tough decision, a crossroads decision, but instead of making the choice, this road or that, you just dropped everything and took off in another direction completely?”

He was speechless, reminded again of Mary.

“I didn’t think so,” she answered herself. “You’re smarter than that. More grounded, centered. I thought I was grounded, but there’s a big difference between being centered and being untested.”

“My guess is you’re being hard on yourself.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Like father, like daughter. Kip told me a lot about his life, you know. I think if he was here he’d tell you that when he left you and your mother for Vietnam, he was anything but grounded, and he’s out there right now still trying to prove to himself that he’s worthy.”

“Of what?”

“Seems to me he’s spent the second half of his life trying to make up for the first. Kind of sad, since I think he’s a far better person than he seems to think he is. He’s helped me in ways I’m sure he’s not aware of, helped my whole family. And now he’s doing what he thinks is best for my uncle, even though it’s turned out to be a pain in the ass for all involved.”

“When he left my mother and me, he may have thought he was doing us a favor. For all I know he was right. But sometimes when you think you’re doing the best for somebody, you’re really throwing a monkey wrench into their life.”

Marcos said, “Look, Ariel. I’m usually not so forward, but you might want to think twice about an abortion.”

“It’s ironic,” she said, standing up with his help.

“What?”

“To be talking about this in the middle of a proving grounds.”

Without giving any thought to whether such a gesture was grounded or not, Marcos drew Ariel toward him and kissed her. Less surprised than she might have been, she held him close, her breath quickening and shallow but her mind unexpectedly calm.

“I must taste awful,” she whispered.

“You don’t.”

“Besides, we probably shouldn’t,” though if asked, she might not have been able to explain why not.

“I know.”

Hand in hand, they walked back toward the dead fire, woke up Delfino, and the three of them retreated under the fallen casita eaves for the balance of their second night at Dripping Spring.

A week had passed since her mother shared with Rose the secret. That she’d spoken with a woman in Los Alamos who claimed to know Mary’s whereabouts. Like Edward Stratemeyer, who under the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene had written the immortal Nancy Drew tales that Rose loved to read to her toddler daughters, Mary had assumed an alias. Rather than thinking any of this weird, Rose marveled at how adventurous her big sister had become. Imagine, taking a pseudonym. It was fantastically romantic, something all of us should do once in our lives. She wondered what Mary’s new name was and how it would feel when she walked like a movie star right through the front door of the old house here in Gallup, glamorously triumphant. Stranger things happened each and every day.

“Mrs. Montoya called again,” Rebecca told Rose after the girls finished lunch and had been tucked in for their afternoon nap.

The house was warm and quiet. A jar of sun-brewed tea sat on the windowsill. Rose was slicing a small hard lemon to add to it.

“What did she say?”

“She said she thought I should meet with Mary.”

“What does Mary think about that?”

“I’m not sure she knows.”

“You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?”

“I should probably talk it over with your dad first.”

“What for? You know what he’ll say.”

“No, I don’t. We haven’t talked about her for quite a while. Your father’s a fair man.”

“Not when it comes to Mary,” Rose said, then mused, “Funny, here I thought she was in Hollywood or New York City all this time pursuing her acting.”

“She was supposedly in Denver.”

“And now she turns up in Los Alamos. You see, I must’ve been right that time in Albuquerque. She
was
there.”

“Probably she’s in Los Alamos because of Clifford. She was always the most independent-minded of you kids, but everybody needs family.”

“Is that what the lady said? That Mary was there because of Uncle Clifford?”

“I just assumed.”

“Well, you should go. You could tell Dad you’re going to visit Clifford. You haven’t been to see Uncle Cliff in the longest time.”

“I don’t like lying to your father.”

“That’s my point. It wouldn’t have to be a lie. There’s not one good reason you shouldn’t go and there are a hundred reasons you should. I’ll go myself if you watch after the kids.”

“It’s not your responsibility.”

“It is if you’re not willing. Look, why don’t you ask John to go with you?”

“He’s got his job.”

“So he takes a couple days off. I’m sure he’d be honored to be asked. I’ll do the house stuff till you get back.”

“You’ve got it all planned out, don’t you.”

“Ma, you have no choice. She’s your daughter.”

“Russell’s gonna be plenty mad.”

“You don’t know that for sure. You might be surprised. He could think it’s the neatest thing his wife’s done in years.”

Rebecca stirred from her chair. Without saying another word, she walked into her bedroom, closed the door. Rose put ice in two glasses and poured tea into one of them. Half an hour passed, the wall clock ticking methodically, the fridge humming, cutting off, humming again. Then the bedroom door opened—Rose could hear its hinges from where she sat—and her mother returned to the kitchen.

“You want your tea now?” She got up to replace the melted ice with fresh cubes.

“Thank you.”

“And?”

“Let’s call Johnny,” said Rebecca.

He walked dead into the Oscuras. From flats to harsh verticality, gray stone stabbing upward. He walked, stopped walking. He stood wobbling in the center of a light-duty road, holding the map up to his face. White Sands range was depicted in the most sumptuous pale pink, with contour lines in brown and the few trails and roads in puce. He tried to hark but nothing came of the effort. His ears whistled, though there was no wind. He’d passed a second night beneath the stars, shivering in his flimsy skin from the cold, just as he shivered during the day from the heat. Knew he wouldn’t last much longer. The basin filled with a dusty sea of midmorning light.

There was a branching here. Twenty-one hundred and eighty feet above sea level, he determined, his head aswim. Farther up this service route were clusters of radio towers. Toward the left, out along the mesa head, was a seasonal washbed that crossed the forking road. If he followed this sandy furrow, it would drop him down to another, apparently smaller road. A shortcut, and the safest route, he figured. From there he’d round the eastern tip of Workman Ridge and head toward Dripping Spring, to Montoya’s disputed stead marked with an X like pirate treasure.

And then? And then, and then.

He took a drink from his flyweight canteen, kind of blindly folded the map, half-checked the compass once more to be certain he was reading things right, and began down the left crossroad. He caromed like some drunk. One foot, the other. He stumbled, sat down hard. Forearms on upjutting knees, he rested his head on his own flesh sawhorse. His breathing was reedy. His lips were drier than his tongue, but his tongue was as dry as the knuckle that he now listlessly gnawed.

Blood was caked on his wrist. Looked like a morbid Rorschach test. Didn’t know where it’d come from, but if he were a diviner he sensed he might be able to decipher its pattern. He knew he was delirious, and he knew probably the blood had merely flowed from his nose or gums and communicated nothing beyond his dire straits, but he liked the improbable delusion that this blood was somehow meaningful, a script legible to whoever might understand the lingo. The army had employed Navajos and Hopi and others from the region to encode secret communiqués during that first nuclear war. Turned out they were good decoders, too. All this blood signage was lost on Kip, trained though he’d been to read the ultimate meaning of a broken branch in the triple-canopy jungles of Laos, and legislate. Read ground movements from his FAC plane and mark estimated enemy positions with Willie Pete bombs, then call in friendly air to lay down the law. But this he couldn’t read, nor could he legislate, even had he been so inclined. Here he was so thirsty he’d lick the sanguine symbols off his skinny wrist if they happened to be wet still. But they weren’t.

Rather, he laid his chin on his wrist and gazed out over the long terrain before him. The vaporous ghost was back out there, hovering. Otherwise nothing but eternal desert. Yucca spires and the long curve of the horizon beyond.

Impossible to tell where the mirage began and sanity ended, or was it the other way around? Kip trembled, much like the pulsating desert before him, either from fever or fear, it hardly mattered which. He might have fallen asleep for half an hour, baking like mortal meat under the early scorching bulb of sun.

The gentleman in the uniform who appeared beside him had a soft sweet face. That was surprising. There were others, all with guns. The closest said, in a stiff low voice, “Sir, you are trespassing highly restricted military space. I need you to identify yourself and tell me what you’re doing here.”

Sometimes words just come out of one’s mouth. Kip’s were, “Don’t you think it’s strange that feet smell and noses run?”

Nothing.

One of the others advised the man crouched beside this desert comedian, “Better give him some water.”

“Not thirsty, thanks anyway. But would you mind helping me stand up? I don’t seem to be able to do it myself.”

The sweet-faced one grasped his hand and hoisted him to his feet.

“I’ll just be on my way, then.”

“Why don’t you do us all the honor of being serious.”

Kip brushed the seat of his pants, a dizzying gesture that nearly toppled him. How many years had it been since he’d purposely forgotten his serial number? A shame.

“How’d you get in here?” another MP asked, reaching out to steady him.

Kip waited through a silence which under the particular circumstances could truly be termed deafening, before answering without humor, “Through the keyhole, like Peter Pan.” His feet weren’t on. Must have fallen off. He looked down but couldn’t see that far. Maybe he lost an eye along the way, too. Really could use that drink of water, but he sensed he missed his rightful chance.

“You are aware you’re trespassing on government property?”

“Must mean we both are.”

These ventures in levity weren’t flying.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

“All right, okay. You understand you’re in violation of the law and will be arrested for trespass.”

Kip kept looking for his feet.

“Can you tell me what the others are doing here?”

Now he looked around. Delfino must not have been dissuaded by Kip’s haphazard decision to take his place. But who were these others? “I don’t see any others. Have I multiplied?” Indeed, he was seeing three, five, nine faces where there was only one. Well, no, there were several others, apparently discussing what to do with him. “You talk amongst yourselves,” he said. “I’ve got to move on.”

“All right, sir, but first would you mind if we had a look at that map? Might be able to help point you in the right direction.”

“Do I look lost?”

No one answered, and Kip saw impatience souring the ranger’s countenance. He handed them what they wanted.

“I didn’t think so. You know, I was just like you boys once.”

The tall fellow studied Kip’s map. A thirty-by-sixty-minute series quadrangle of the Oscura Mountains, N3330. Highway patrol had discovered an abandoned pickup truck on Route 380, just south of Lonnie Moon Peak, by an access road that cut into the range toward Workman Ridge and the radio installation at Bug Peak. Registered to a Delfino Montoya; this was most likely their guy. No map annotations that might clue them in on his motives, that is if he had any, or the identities of the others, though they were definitely in on it together—that was clear from the penciled X at Dripping Spring.

“Got ID on you?” the first uniform demanded.

“What for?”

“We’re just trying to help you out here. Your name Delfino Montoya?”

That was choice.

“Is yours Kip Calder?”

“Who’s Kip Calder?”

One of them wrote down the name in a notebook.

“Nobody.”

“You know, you’re starting to rub me the wrong way, Mr. Montoya. Who is Kip Calder? Is he one of your three friends?”