Ariel's Crossing (44 page)

She felt as troubled listening to Sarah as she’d been on that beach. Curious how that same memorable shock—that Ariel’d been snatched by forces over which her mother held no sway—revisited her now. No drowning ocean here, but tides were always at work. She put her hand in her jacket pocket, unconscious of the gesture, and asked Brice if he knew anybody at Los Alamos who might intervene on their behalf down at White Sands—even the name of the place gave her the creeps, resurrecting Montauk in the process. Ariel and the others would naturally be treated better were there a friendly voice pleading their cause. Someone who knew someone who knew someone.

He didn’t know anyone, however. Those bridges, never having been built, could hardly be burned during the passing years. His mother, ages ago, might have known the right person, forged the right connection, but that bridge was gone, too, that lifeline lost with a finality Brice had yet to fathom.

“White Sands told me they’d get back in touch as soon as they had some hard information,” Sarah said. “I don’t know if I trust them, but they gave me a number that puts us directly through to some office where they’re following this.”

“Did they say anything specific about Ariel?”

“The three of them—Carl’s brother, your daughter, our son—have been located, they said. And they promised they’re going to bring them out, all very peacefully.”

“This is Delfino’s doing. He’s gonna get a piece of my mind. Like I said before, jail might give him time to think about where his obstinance has got him. Not to mention the others.”

“Carl,” said Sarah.

“It doesn’t sound like Kip’s any innocent, either,” said Brice.

“They’re both hardheaded.”

“Hard head’s only good if you’re a hammer.”

The four parents stood beneath the portico eave, hesitant to speak, though a windchime down by Kip’s old room idly troubled the whispering air. Helpless and uncomfortable and worried, they looked at one another, as Mary watched on, wondering why generation after generation rushed into parenthood given the crazy folly children brought into parents’ lives and parents into children’s. She, too, was struggling here, not knowing what to do. The visit with Uncle Clifford had been upsetting because, in her presence, his dementia ebbed. His smile had been strangely ordinary as he fondly told her what a beautiful little girl she’d been, always with a sweet tooth for Toll House cookies and raspberry sherbet. “Eaten at the same sitting,” he’d recalled correctly, prompting her to laugh and him to laugh with her.

She spoke up now. “I’m Mary.”

“Mary’s a friend of Marcos,” Sarah said, welcoming a reprieve from Carl’s diatribe.

“I’m sure Marcos is looking out for Ariel. He’s the most responsible person you’d ever want to meet, and your daughter—”

Her thought wouldn’t complete itself so Brice offered, “She’s generally pretty responsible herself.” The windchime flurried, then was calmed. “So Kip’s still alive and well,” he continued. “Last time I saw him, he told me he was sick, and looked it. I offered to help but he wouldn’t take me up on it.”

“He’s not that well. But he’s definitely still alive.”

“Been living with us.”

“How’d you meet?”

“Sarah found him damn near dead, sleeping in our barn a few years ago, around Easter. He’d been over in Chimayó for the Good Friday celebration and didn’t have anywhere to go afterward, so he just walked until he dropped.”

Brice grasped what this meant before Carl finished speaking, as did Jessica. The revelation stirred in them both a multitude of feelings, from compassion to regret to sorrow, for their undaunted confrere. Kip. There was no unbraiding him from the weave without tearing the fabric of their own lives.

“He’s become a member of the family,” Sarah was saying.

“Kip’s hard not to love,” Brice half smiled, half grimaced. “I’ve known him my whole life long. Every time I wanted to hate him, I failed. Every time I thought he was gone for good, I was wrong. He’s the most present absence I’ve ever known.”

“He introduced me to Brice, you know.”

“I guess that makes us all family, loose knit,” Sarah said. “You look exhausted. Let’s have some coffee, something to eat.”

Jess took her husband by the arm—a protective gesture, mindful of his perplexity—wanting to hold him up, his burden. Not unlike hers, his thoughts strayed from past to past, faltering into this present crisis when called upon. So many images of his mother. Swabbing tincture of Merthiolate on his skinned knees once when he crashed his bike down by Ashley Pond and blowing on them to make the sting go away. How she loved Christmas with its luminarias and her kitchen smelling of eggnog and fresh gingerbread so delicious it made his head spin. The way she always defended Dad after he, Brice, came of age and began to ruin dinners by excoriating the lab, refusing to eat food bought with “blood money.” What marvelous loyalty in the face of her own grave doubts. Her instinct to protect the underdog, the misunderstood Kip, the singular Bonnie Jean, her wayward son himself. Her voracious love of Ariel, expressed quietly through little gifts and letters, and her continuing quest to teach the girl about God and Heaven and all those churchy things he abhorred but had instinctively left unimpaired. That last time he saw her alive, humming in the kitchen,
There’s a someone I’m longing to see, I hope that he turns out to be …
and his farewell kiss, holding her delicate head between palms soiled with tierra bendita from Chimayó. The same healing dirt that Kip had scooped from the shrine that day.

“When did you speak with White Sands last?”

“About an hour ago.”

“You mind if I make a redundant call?”

They walked the length of the porch and while Brice telephoned, Sarah made sandwiches and Mary poured out cups of gazpacho. On the stable phone Montoya, too, called around to make arrangements with a couple of other horsemen who’d cover the ranch for him if he found he had to leave for Tularosa basin on the quick.

Having been told that a William Calder was in custody and being brought in for medical attention, and contact had been made with the other three, and that no further information was available at this time—yes, certainly, they understood he was the father of the young lady, and they appreciated his concern and all the fresh information he’d been kind enough to provide—Brice hung up and, in the relative privacy of Sarah’s niche office, finally wept a silent stream of tears for his mother, his daughter, his touched friend. Elbows on his knees, face in his hands, his shoulders heaved. In any life, he knew, there were innumerable ways to fuck up, so many wrong paths to choose from, and while his mother’s death had been inevitable, the broken promise he’d made to her more than three years ago, that he would see her again soon, need not have been. What good were apologies offered too late? Nevertheless, his attempt at giving thanks to her for what she’d done and what she’d tried to do for him seemed a much less ludicrous endeavor than he might have presumed. Prayers—call them that—for Ariel and Kip wouldn’t harm a soul.
Soul?
Listen to him. So Brice added words of petition on their behalf. In the bathroom off the kitchen he splashed water on his face. Weren’t deathbed conversions reserved for the dying? What was he doing?

Whatever it was, he felt no regret. If only he could say the same about every act he’d ever ventured.

This room had one window that looked out on a mostly empty parking lot. Its cinderblock walls were painted battleship gray and its smooth concrete floors an amiable blue. The steel door was unpainted. Metal table, metal chairs, a standard hospital bed and good old hail-fellow-unwell-met intravenous tree. Very bright fluorescents. The wall phone connected the occupants to either a nurses’ station or guard post down the corridor outside. And yet it was more an impersonal than an unfriendly room, military all the way. Even the waiting MPs were not so unfriendly—just that he didn’t want to dialogue with them at the moment.

“There’s a lot of folks concerned about you.”

Kip didn’t have any response, so didn’t respond.

The other man asked if he was maybe feeling a little better.

“Yeah,” he answered quietly, though his insides were as raw as the day he first arrived at Rancho Pajarito. Felt like a famished mouse was gnawing its way back and forth through his guts. The rippling pain came and went in surges, which made him think that maybe the mouse had to rest, digest a little before starting again to tunnel around in the red dark. Kip tried not to complain. They supplemented the glucose with some pain reliever that was doing its work, more or less.

“Doctor said it was a good thing they found you when they did.”

This second man was standing, having entered the room a few minutes earlier. Kip sat on the side of the bed. They’d given him pajamas, garb as simple as the room he inhabited. His feet were bandaged and he had to make do with padding around in surgeon’s socks whenever time came to hit the loo.

“The basin’s not what I’d call a great place to take a stroll.”

“Even if it was legal.”

More of the same innocuous jive their colleagues had anted up over the last half dozen hours. For the most part, though he felt silly doing so, he had retorted with his correct name and rank—which had been useful to them—and unmatching serial numbers, which hadn’t made much difference one way or the other. For Kip, this reentry into a military habitat coaxed him back toward the tired mental geography of war. The dirt airstrip, its short runway in the mist. Thirsty yellow oxen driven by mountain farmers scarred by chemicals. A beautiful aircraft cartwheeling as its shellstruck flier pulled a nylon elevator, floating into the tiered black jungle.

But Kip knew it was a fool’s game. He pushed away all thoughts of battle madness and when that flaming personal curtain lifted, he could almost smell his mother’s
arenas,
cornmeal pancakes and maple syrup, as he looked at the blue floor of this military hospital not in Luang Prabang or Pakse or Saravane or anywhere else, but simply here in the country where he’d been born.

“What you said before about people being concerned,” he said. “Who do you mean?”

“Your lawyer, for one.”

“I don’t have a lawyer.”

“Just like you don’t have a family?”

The other man added, “The people up at Dripping Spring are asking after you, too.”

“There’s only one person at Dripping Spring, like I already said.”

“Three.”

“What’re their names?”

“We thought you’d like to tell us.”

“I’m sure he already gave you the information. It’s not like he went there in order to hide.”

“He’s right,” the standing man said. “Mr. Montoya identified himself. So did the others.”

“Well,” said Kip, neutrally.

“Maybe it’d be best to just fill him in on what we have and hope he’ll reciprocate,” proposed the seated man, then, to Kip, “Fair?”

Kip shrugged. Gamesters.

“The young guy’s name is Marcos Montoya and the woman is Ariel Rankin.”

Calm, even serene, Kip asked them why they were lying to him.

“That’s the pure, unadulterated truth. What makes you think we’d bother to lie?”

“Because in your position I might be inclined to do so.”

“We’ll keep that in mind.”

Kip lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. They were giving him the straight dope.

Ariel. She was finally here. Not just here, but with Delfino and Marcos at Dripping Spring. Spoke volumes about the girl—or no, about the woman. That she had accomplished such a feat. He knew. After all, he’d just been scraped off the floor of that same terrain. Imagine, Marcos and Delfino knew her, at least a little.

Ironic he should be in military custody this day, given his old instincts—such as they were—remained, as ever, to flee. But the marathoner had been run to ground. On that faraway evening when he’d sat with his father’s ledger and begun to pen his apology—an apologia, really—he had unwontedly sought forgiveness. Mores the pity he’d been backsliding ever since. His perennial desire to forge an eleventh-hour bond with Ariel might once more be in limbo, but whether he desired to meet her or run to the farthest ends of the earth to avoid her was suddenly irrelevant. Fate had its own sense of humor.

“You obviously know them.”

No reaction.

“We can arrange to hook you up if you were of a mind to help them out of their jam—”

That was rich.

“—and clue them in that we’re here to accommodate them, if possible.”

“They’ve got a few hours of daylight yet today and it’d be best for everybody if they agreed to come out.”

“Whatever the grievance, we can discuss it.”

Kip surprised the standing man by saying he’d be willing to speak with Delfino Montoya. Immediately, the seated man rose to his feet and left the room by the door, which was opened from the outside.

“Could I get some more milk?” Kip asked. “More of those graham crackers, too.”

Baby food. But even the chocolate the rangers had given him on the flats hadn’t stayed down. Reduced to pablum, it seemed.

“You got it.”

“By the way, I’d like to speak with this lawyer of mine.”

“It can be arranged.”

“Am I under arrest? Officially, that is?”

“You can’t arrest people unofficially. I’m not sure I get your question, Captain.”

He hadn’t been addressed by that designation in a long time.

“What I’m saying is, can I ask to leave these premises and legally be granted my request?”

“Afraid not, sir.”

“I understand. My lawyer, please.”

Kip was left alone with his refreshments and gathering worries. As his guru Wagner would have concurred, these imminent reckonings were merely his wishes finally come true. Too bad he wasn’t the suicidal type, an idea that brought an odd smile to his lips, and a question. Why are you so scared? With all the choices having been made and their consequences come or coming to pass, there was nothing to fear anymore. He’d failed too many times to enumerate, his most recent fiasco having landed him in this blinding tomb. Body failing, the last of his health—for lack of a kinder euphemism—fading. For crying out loud, this paper cup of skim milk felt as heavy as slagged ore in his hand. Chewing the crackers was labor and swallowing them a strain. The starch in these jammies abraded his sunburned skin. His injured feet throbbed beneath the physician’s dressings with more authority than the shy beating of his heart. Death, mercenary or merciful, had hovered at his shoulder for many years now. So what was the problem.