Canyon Sacrifice (2 page)

She was a city girl, twenty-seven, on her first camping trip. She wore a sequined black leather jacket, electric-purple sneakers, and skinny jeans. Silver hoops dangled from her ears and a small jewel sparkled at the side of her nose. Her high cheekbones and dimpled chin were sharply defined by the early sun angling through the trees.

Other camps were coming to life around them, people emerging from tents and trailers scattered beneath the ponderosa pine trees that grew tall here in Mather Campground, half a mile south of the canyon rim at the east edge of Grand Canyon Village. The needle-covered ground was speckled with shade and sunlight. Already the chill of the high-desert night was
nearly gone, giving way to the blazing August day to come. The smell of wood smoke and frying bacon drifted through the trees. Campers made their way on foot along the network of roads that led to bathrooms spaced throughout the campground.

Chuck put his arms around Janelle from behind and nuzzled the back of her neck. Her long, straight, dark-chocolate hair, pulled loosely into a ponytail, tickled his face. “Mmmm,” he murmured. “Girls up yet?”

“You kidding? Late as we got here, I bet they'll go another hour.”

He ran the tip of his nose along her cheek. She turned and kissed him hard, pulling the full length of his body against hers, then moved him backward a step with playful fingers that slipped under his shirt to tickle his stomach. “Coffee,” she directed. “Then the pancakes, like you said.”

“We've got an hour.”

“Not for coffee.”

They'd arrived well after dark, having made the seven-hour drive from the southwest Colorado mountain town of Durango across the Navajo Reservation in a single push. An archaeologist by profession, and founder and sole full-time employee of Bender Archaeological, Inc., Chuck had ticked off the sites he'd won contracts to survey and dig over the years as they'd passed them along the way: the Baptist Church expansion in Teec Nos Pos, the new Burger King on the west side of Kayenta, the enlarged Peabody Coal transfer yard at the foot of Black Mesa, and, along Highway 160 across much of northern Arizona, the two-year job that had kept him busy into July as things with Janelle had heated up, the right-of-way for a planned electric transmission line across the reservation to Phoenix from the Four Corners Power Plant in northwest New Mexico. Chuck's one-man firm had provided the required archaeological assessment, with digging, screening, and cataloging of unearthed
artifacts as necessary, before construction at each site could begin.

They'd stopped along the way for Chuck to meet with Marvin Begay in the lobby of the Tuba City Quality Inn. Marvin was the young tribal official in charge of the transmission-line contract, which included a specific focus on the ancient Anasazi Indians who predated the Navajo in the region by a millennium.

Chuck pulled his camp stove from the back of Janelle's pearl-gray mini-SUV, fired it up on the metal-mesh picnic table in the center of the campsite, and set water to boiling. He spooned French roast into his drip-filter and poured in the steaming water, sending the heady aroma of fresh coffee straight to his brain. Before he could hand Janelle her filled mug, five-year-old Rosie came barreling out of the fold-out camper set up in the campsite's gravel drive. The camper's screen door slammed behind her as she charged barefooted across the site and piled into her mother's arms.

Janelle scooped her daughter up in a bear hug. “
Preciosa mia
,” she whispered into Rosie's ear, as she did each morning.

“
Preciosa mia, tambien, Mamá
,” Rosie recited back huskily.

Rosie's throaty rasp, particularly apparent first thing in the morning, channeled her grandfather's gravelly growl. Everything about Rosie matched Janelle's father. Rosie was squat and big-boned like her grandfather, and shared his wide face, deep-set eyes, and mischievous smile.

The girl's chubby heels dug into the small of Janelle's back. Animal-print flannel pajamas rode up her legs, exposing round calves. Matted brown hair stood out from the back of her head as if starched.

Rosie held on tight when Janelle lowered her to the ground, sliding down her mother's torso like a firefighter descending a firehouse pole until she came to rest seated in the dirt. Janelle stepped out of Rosie's circled arms, pulled her to a standing
position, and patted her on her dusty backside in the direction of the camper. “Your clothes are on your bed,
m'hija
. Bring the hair brush when you come back out.”

Rosie turned to Chuck, struck a pose with her hip jutted far out to one side, and gave him a circular wave. “Hey there, stranger,” she said in a pitch-perfect impression of a smoky-voiced starlet from a 1940s Hollywood black-and-white.

Chuck grinned and returned Rosie's wave as she sashayed back across the campsite and reentered the camper. He turned to Janelle. “I thought you said we had an hour.”

“Coffee.” Janelle held out her hand. “Quick.”

They sat sipping while Rosie bounced around inside the trailer, humming loudly as she got dressed. Chuck leaned back in his camp chair and relished the tang of the coffee at the back of his throat.

The meeting with Marvin Begay the previous afternoon had gone well. Marvin had been named Director of Anthropological Affairs for the Navajo tribe straight out of college three years ago, just weeks after his uncle, Robert Begay, had been tapped as the first-ever Native American chief ranger of Grand Canyon National Park. Chuck and his subcontracted assistant, Clarence, had completed the last of the fieldwork required by the transmission-line contract a month ago, and the final report on their work was due to Marvin in two weeks.

The report would detail the scant evidence of past Anasazi presence Chuck and Clarence had discovered along the transmission-line route. Chuck knew the rudimentary evidence he and Clarence had come across—a handful of potsherds, a few hunting points—wouldn't please Marvin. The tribal official had dropped several hints over the course of the contract that Chuck would do well to find something of value along the right-of-way to bolster the contention among a subset of young Navajos, Marvin included, that the Anasazi had been more culturally
advanced than the current historical record indicated. To Chuck's relief, Marvin gave voice yesterday in Tuba City only to the same vague hints he'd made over the preceding two years. That enabled Chuck to offer equally vague assurances to Marvin in return and get back on the road with Janelle and the girls in less than an hour.

Chuck blew on his coffee and turned his attention to the day ahead. Everything about the last few days had been aimed at getting here—buying the used camper, outfitting it with gear from his garage, bolting a tow hitch to Janelle's car, and shopping for daypacks and hiking boots for her and the girls.

“I'm not sure I know how to do this,” he confessed.

“Do what?” Janelle asked.

“Be a tourist here.”

“That's why we came, Chuck.”

A loud
thump
issued through the canvas walls of the camper as Rosie leapt from the sleeping platform to the floor.

Chuck smiled ruefully. “Our honeymoon.”

“A few days. Just us. Before school starts. A chance for you to show the girls and me what it is you do out here for months on end, remember?”

Yes, he remembered. And yes, Janelle was right on all counts. This had been her idea, coming to the Grand Canyon, a place she'd never visited despite her whole life spent six hours away in Albuquerque. She'd insisted on camping, too, an entrée of sorts for her and the girls to Chuck's archaeological world, the epicenter of which was right here at the canyon.

The millions of tourists who visited Grand Canyon National Park each year did so for the incredible views of one of the most awe-inspiring geological wonders on Earth. But Chuck's fascination with the place was different. Though he bid for contracts all across the high-desert uplift known as the Colorado Plateau, which stretched more than a hundred miles in all directions
from the Grand Canyon, he bid hardest and lowest for contracts at the canyon itself—and every time he looked into the canyon's depths and felt his bones tingle with its long history of humankind, he knew why.

“It's great to have the chance to show you around,” he said. “It's just . . .”

“It's just what?”

Chuck knew what he was supposed to do right now. It was his duty to explain himself, to work through the complexities of what he was thinking with his new wife. But how was he to do that when even the word
wife
remained foreign to him? How was he to open up to Janelle when he'd had a lifetime of working through things on his own, with no one else's opinions to consult or concerns to worry about?

“We'll do the rim today,” he said, sticking to the basics.

“Fine.” Janelle bit off the word.

He plowed ahead. “Grab some food and jump a shuttle out to Hermit's Rest.”

Another thump sounded from inside the camper, causing the small trailer to rock atop its telescoped legs like a skiff bobbing on the ocean. This time the thump was followed by a high-pitched wail from seven-year-old Carmelita.

“Oops,” Rosie said earnestly from behind the wall of canvas. “Sorry,
hermana
.”

“Get away from me!” Carmelita screamed.

Janelle disappeared inside the camper to coo soothingly over Carmelita while Chuck, freed for the moment from the challenge of marital communication, centered the skillet over the larger of the stove's two burners and started in on the pancakes.

Three hours later, Chuck, Janelle, and the girls made their way through the village on foot, the girls scurrying ahead in their new boots, slender Carmelita several inches taller than Rosie, a wide receiver to Rosie's fullback. The girls' lacy blouses
and matching red shorts blended easily with the colorful attire of the throngs of summer visitors making their way along the village walkways in the steadily rising heat of the day.

After stopping to pick up a picnic lunch of chips and sandwiches, they headed for the Central Village shuttle-bus stop. The sun beat down on the metal roof of the bus as they settled into their seats and headed west on Rim Drive, the route of Chuck's early-morning run. Fellow tourists filled the seats around them. Rosie collapsed against Chuck in the hard plastic double-seat they shared, her eyes half-closed in the heat. Carmelita sat slumped beside her mother a row behind Chuck and Rosie.

“This is sooooo boring,” Carmelita declared, crossing her arms in front of her with an audible
harrumph
.

“Hush,” Janelle warned, but her curt tone revealed her own discomfort.

Chuck realized, too late, that he should have directed Janelle and the girls to the cool confines of the South Rim Museum as the heat of the day came on. Janelle's after-breakfast trip to the campground showers with the girls had taken well over an hour, far longer than he'd anticipated, yet it was he, as inexperienced tour guide, who had determined they should take the shuttle as midday approached. Now here they sat, trapped and broiling, the bus ride having just begun.

Should he suggest to Janelle that they stay on the shuttle when it reached the end of the out-and-back road and return to the village? Get to the museum as quickly as possible and come out this way again for sunset, after the heat of the day let up? Or was he better off sticking with the plan, not admitting his mistake?

The driver, dressed for the heat in a light-colored blouse and loose trousers, piloted the shuttle beneath the raised gate that kept private vehicles off Rim Drive. She steered the bus away from the village along the canyon rim. The depths of the canyon,
visible to the right through breaks in the trees, were washed out by the harsh, midmorning sun. Mesmerizing at sunrise and sunset, the view of the canyon this time of day was a hazy muddle of weak reds, dusty tans, and indistinct browns bisected by the blurry gray ribbon of the Colorado River far below.

In a monotone as drab and colorless as the midday canyon depths, the driver delivered a stream of facts into a headset that carried her voice through speakers in the shuttle ceiling to her passengers: it was eight miles from the village to the end of the road at Hermit's Rest, the canyon was more than a mile deep at its deepest point, the volume of water in the river averaged fifteen-thousand cubic feet per second, enough to satisfy the residential needs of ten million people downstream in Phoenix and Los Angeles.

The shuttle rounded a bend and the first stop on the route came into view. Flashing lights at the stop jolted Chuck out of his heat-induced torpor. The paved pullout on the right side of the road was lined with park vehicles—three pale-green ranger patrol sedans, an ambulance, a fire-rescue truck, and the gleaming, white, government-issue Chevy Suburban driven by Chief Ranger Robert Begay—all with their blue and red emergency lights flashing.

The shuttle driver broke from her monologue long enough to interject, with a glimmer of animation, “As you can see, we won't be stopping at Maricopa Point this morning.”

Chuck leaned past Rosie's slumped form to scan the rocky outcrop jutting from the canyon rim a hundred feet north of the line of vehicles. Just inside the railing at the far end of the point, where the promontory fell away straight down for more than a hundred feet, several park firefighters in heavy canvas pants, long-sleeved yellow shirts, and white helmets stuffed climbing ropes and ascending devices into large nylon duffels. Half a dozen rangers in standard park-service uniform—dark
green slacks, gray dress shirts with shiny gold badges, and broad-brimmed hats—stood in a loose circle around something resting on the sunbaked stone surface of the overlook.