In the Path of Falling Objects (16 page)

“Here.” And he began handing things over to me. “I think these will fit you okay. I know they make us look like we’re Maoists, even though we’re Indian.”

“You are?”

“Well, my dad’s white. But my mom’s Indian.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Well, you know how some white guys are. In New Mexico, I mean.”

Dalton laughed.

He gave me a set of dry clothes and boots to wear, and it felt so good to get out of my wet things, the clothes I had been carrying around for days, and change into something different. And even though Dalton was just a bit shorter than me, his things fit me better than Matthew’s ever did. So when I had finished changing, it almost looked like we were both in
the same Army or something; I had on the same loose khaki pants, which I tucked into the tops of the boots he’d given me, and a dry tee shirt that actually fit me and was newer, probably, than anything Simon and I ever owned. He even dug a cap, tan, like his, out from a cardboard box full of canned green beans.

So when I got back into that car, clean and dry, and Dalton started driving again, I tried to tell myself that everything would work out, that things would get better.

But I couldn’t stop worrying about Simon.

I couldn’t get Lilly off my mind, either.

“Now all you need’s the haircut and you’ll look like one of us,” he said.

I may not have felt sure about what I was doing, but I did get into that car with Dalton, and I was very hungry, so I decided to try to relax and just see where I’d end up from this ride. I sat back in my seat and watched the canyon walls stretching taller as he drove us along the creek toward his camp.

“How far is it?” I asked. I felt myself almost falling to sleep.

“We have a way,” Dalton said. “The camp’s eighteen miles in from the bridge, and we can’t go very fast on this road.”

“Eighteen miles,” I sighed, calculating the distance between me and my brother drifting away in that Lincoln, and then cursing myself because I thought that counting those miles seemed too much like something Mitch would do.
Anyway
, I thought, trying to erase any numbers from my head,
here I am and there’s nothing else I can do about it now
.

“You said it was just a few miles.”

Dalton smiled. “Eighteen is a few. To me.”

The camp sat in a wide clearing along the creek where a large canvas tent stood beside a truck with a rusting camper shell. There was one
table and some chairs sitting beside the tent, a cooking area, and a fire ring with a blackened coffeepot resting atop a rock at its edge. One crooked willow tree extended its branches above the tent, and several yards back, a still, green pool of water formed where the creek backed up against the bend of red rock in the shade of the canyon’s sheer face. I could see where there were stones piled, forming walls and storage bins, part of the remains of a ruined pueblo near the bottom of the canyon.

“This is where I live,” Dalton said as he opened his door. He peeled off his goggles and cap.

I took my goggles off. I was sweating where they’d been cupped against my skin.

“It’s pretty primitive,” he said, pointing to the green pond. “There’s our bathtub. And up behind those rocks is where our toilet is, currently.”

“Where’s your parents?”

“They’re probably digging around in the caves or working on the house. Or Dad’s doing one of his things. We’ll go find them in a minute.”

I wondered what he meant about his father doing one of his “things.”

“You mean there’s more to it than this?” I asked. I looked over at the rock walls I had seen when we pulled up, the little black openings on the rounded storage bins at the base of the canyon.

“This is nothing,” Dalton said. “You’ll see.”

Jones
,

I know I haven’t gotten all your letters you wrote to me. They keep moving us around. Don’t worry, they’ll catch up to me one day.

You know, I never thought a person could get as depressed as I am. I’m always tense and can never seem to relax. You should see me trying to keep my hand steady as I write this letter. It’s pretty sad.

Now that the monsoons are over, all kinds of stuff is starting to happen.

About a week ago, one of our positions got a ground attack and the Duster crew there hopped on a truck to take off. A mortar round hit the truck and killed 2. The other 3 are going up for a court-martial for desertion in the face of the enemy. You just can’t win at all over here.

A couple nights ago we had a small ground attack. We captured 2 VC and killed a woman, and a sniper killed one of the guys on my crew. The RVNs got the two prisoners and when they were finished with them the prisoners were wishing they were dead, too.

I am at a firebase called Nui Ong. It’s really pretty here and there’s a river down the hill where we can go swimming or take baths in the daytime. The water feels real nice on days like this.

All I can think about is getting out of here. I miss you and Simon
so much. Do you think you could send me a picture of you guys? Try to make it one where you maybe aren’t fighting, though, if there is such a thing (ha ha). I would really like that. I will send you some pictures in my next letter, like you asked. I haven’t been taking many lately.

It’s about 18:00, so I have about 4 hours till things start happening again. It’s usually quiet in the day, but at night all hell breaks loose.

Did I tell you I got a .38 police special and I wear it all the time? Tonight I’m going to sleep with my pants and boots on so I’ll be ready for them.

Well, I guess that’s all I have to say for now.

Would you believe I still got 7 months to go? God!

Bye for now.

Love
,

Matthew

The sun sat low over the rim of the canyon.

It seemed like all the light had turned yellow.

The air cooled, smelled like sage and rusted leaves.

I helped Dalton unlash the ropes binding all the gear that was tied down on the VW’s roof rack. We were sweating, and sat down to rest on the chairs outside the tent. A breeze whispered out through the canyon’s opening. It felt like the world was breathing on us.

I was so hungry. I felt tired and weak, and I propped my chin up with both hands as I rested my elbows on the top of the table and tried to stay awake.

“What is all that stuff?” I asked, and nodded in the direction of the poles and bundles we unloaded from the VW.

“It’s a tepee,” Dalton said. “Well, it’s going to be after we put it up. Me and you and my dad can do it. You ever put up a real tepee before?”

“No.”

“It’s not hard,” he said. “I bought it from the hippies in Los Alamos.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll have more living space, then. So I don’t have to sleep in the same tent with my sister always. You ever been there? Los Alamos? It’s called the Placitas Commune, or something.”

“I never been nowhere,” I said.

“You been to the bottom of a river,” Dalton said. “Come on, let’s go find them.”

Dalton led me down a trail that followed the shore where the creek twisted away beneath trees and brush. Where the canyon just seemed to tumble open as though spitting out huge red boulders, I saw the rest of the pueblo he’d told me about. It was one of those things you really wouldn’t notice at first, because of the way the brush had grown over, but between the spiny brambles of mesquite and yucca, I saw wall upon wall of tightly stacked rocks, flattened and squared, block-shaped rooms with dark doorways and windows tucked back beneath the canyon, and all so perfectly blended in that it took me a while to realize how big this settlement had been, because everywhere I looked, it seemed like something else that proved people had once survived here would just appear from the rock.

Dalton pointed to a spot where the canyon wall arched outward from the bottom, making a sort of cave in the shadows.

“There’s some great rock paintings over in there,” he said. “That’s probably where my folks are. My dad’s doing one of his own paintings there.”

I suddenly wasn’t so tired and hungry.

“This place is amazing,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I followed Dalton as he led me through the brush along the trail toward the spot he’d pointed out.

“And, Jonah? I forgot to mention something you should know. My dad is kind of peculiar.”

I wondered what he meant by that, but I figured you’d kind of have to be different to want to live out here, the way that they were living.

Dalton went on, “So don’t mind him if he says or does anything weird. He’s just, well, you’ll see.”

The thing that struck me most about his parents was their difference in age. His mother was so pretty and young, she could have passed for being in her twenties, even if Dalton
was
eighteen. And Dalton’s dad had the stubble of a gray-white beard and the white nubs of a military-style haircut showing where the hat didn’t cover his scalp. He was short and very strong, and had gleaming eyes that looked like they were frozen in constant amusement. Dalton’s sister, who eyed me with unblinking curiosity—maybe because of my hair, I thought—looked to be about ten years old.

We all stood in the cool shade of the cavern, just a shallow mouth, really, beneath a huge overhanging lip of red stone.

It was like being in another world.

At one edge of the cave, the rock face had been splotched with white, splattering around the negative impressions of hands, vacant silhouettes, open palms of the Indians who’d lived there centuries before. Next to the panel of hands, I saw a large set of concentric circles surrounded by black-silhouetted figures: more handprints, and animals that looked like snakes and bulls, a rider on horseback carrying a weapon, and something that looked like a giant man with spines coming from his legs, his arm outstretched, a tree springing up from his hand.

But the strangest thing in that cave was the painting at the opposite end of the back wall, the one that Dalton’s father had been working
on. It was a mural, brightly colored, of an open-topped black convertible driving on a crowded street. I recognized the scene. It was a picture of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Dalton’s father held a reddened brush in one hand. He looked at me, and then at his son.

“Who’s this, Dalt?”

“He’s a friend,” Dalton said. “His name’s Jonah.”

And his father said, “Nice to meet you, Jonah.”

He stuck his hand out for me.

I shook his paint-smeared hand as he continued, “Just call me Arno.”

I looked at Dalton, who just shrugged as if to say weird names ran in the family. But then Arno told me his wife’s name was Bev, and their little girl’s was Shelly.

“I like the painting,” I said.

“Well, only this part’s my work.” Arno waved his hand across the Dallas scene. “This happened seven years ago. These others probably happened seven hundred years ago. Heck! I just thought of that. I gotta paint a seven up there somewhere. Balance it out.”

He scooped up a cup of blue paint and stirred his brush around in it.

“See what I mean?” Dalton whispered, shrugging. “He gets weird when he paints.”

I felt better because it sounded so normal to me, the way his dad’s voice echoed in that cave, the way he smiled at the little girl, Shelly, and they all had such pleasant-looking faces, even if they were all dressed in the same kind of clothes that Dalton wore—that I was now wearing—which made us look like some kind of desert cult or something.

I tilted my cap back on my head so they could see my face, and I thought about what Lilly had said about me being handsome, hoped
I looked nice enough to Dalton’s family. I tried to smile, but I knew I looked nervous.

While we walked back to the camp, Dalton’s father told stories about the Kennedy assassination: how he’d been there on the street when it happened, and then went home and took Dalton and the rest of the family to Mexico the next day. And he pointed out another wall he’d painted, called
1968
, and he said, “That was the year I thought the world was going to come to an end.”

“Why would you paint out here if nobody will ever see it?” I asked.

“Maybe they will,” he said. “In seven hundred years or so.”

And Arno smiled at me, turned to his son, and said, “I’m glad you brought a friend home, Dalton. I hope you know you can stay as long as you like, Jonah.”

I bit my lip and looked at Dalton.

My stomach growled as we pushed our way through the brush.

“Sounds like the boy needs to eat,” his mother said.

I helped Dalton and his father build their tepee while Bev and Shelly cooked.

I was tired, but also kind of rejuvenated from spending time with Dalton and his family. I especially liked Dalton’s mom, and I envied him, wondering what it must be like to live with parents who obviously cared about you, loved you, even if they did live like Indians.

We had to take off our shirts. It was so hot, working in the late afternoon, and I was soaked in sweat.

I apologized to Dalton about the shirt.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You can keep it, anyway. We have tons of clothes from the surplus. Didn’t you see it all in the car?”

“It was kind of buried,” I said.

His father carefully placed round stones from the riverbank in a circle at one side of the tepee.

“Dalton’s never been exactly organized,” he said.

I pulled my wet hair back behind my neck and held it away from my skin.

“He said I could give him a haircut.” Dalton looked at me, like he was testing me.

“I did?”

“I was wondering if you were a hippie or something,” Arno said.

I felt cornered. I didn’t really want my hair cut. I felt like somehow it would make me that much farther away from Simon. But I gave up.

“I just . . .” I began. “I haven’t gotten it cut in too long, I guess.”

“After, you can wash up in the pool before dinner if you want,” Dalton said. “Sorry there’s not much privacy living like this.”

“I wouldn’t know what privacy is, anyway,” I said.