Ariel's Crossing (18 page)

With Kip’s eyes, Ariel stared at this man who pointed at one of the faces in the image. “That one must be your father.”

“He is,” she said, adding quietly, “I’ve never met him.”

Discouraged but not defeated, Ariel picked a few postcards from the carousel, colorful depictions of the santuario, and rummaged a couple of dollars from her pocket. Raymond refused the money and wished her luck. As she left the small shop, she failed to observe, on a lower shelf in the display case, the few Peruvian burial dolls that were still in stock, lying together on their backs gathering Potrero dust. She walked into the dense sunlight that warmed the upper plaza and made the chrome fenders of parked cars glint like cruel smiles.

Hazarding the appearance of one who had at least mildly lost her mind, she passed the rest of that day showing the snapshot to others around the village. No one recognized their faces. Up where the road to Taos wishboned, a woman in the weavers’ shop remarked, with a kindly inflection that could have been misconstrued as optimism but wasn’t, that unless Ariel happened upon someone who’d been a childhood friend, she probably wasn’t going to succeed in finding this boy all these years later.

Kip’s daughter looked down at the rough plank floors of the weaving shop. The close smell of wool hung in this room filled with ponchos, blankets, sweaters.

“You need find somebody who know the name. This photo not help you too good. People get look different when they older. I know too well.”

That was fair. More than fair—a courtesy.

As afternoon shadows began to engulf the valley, Ariel sat in the deepening silence of her car, having tucked the image back into the Calder notebook. How could she have failed to foresee the weaver’s obvious point? Should she merely write it off to inexperience, fallibility, blindness, or had she come all this distance
not
to find Kip Calder but merely to weigh in with the apparent effort so she could feel she had completed the circle he’d begun here, in Chimayó? Pretty damn long distance to travel with the underlying goal of not arriving somewhere. She frowned, turned the car around in the stony lot, got onto the paved road, and headed back toward Pojoaque and Los Alamos, whose towers shimmered way off to the west under the dusking sun.

She suddenly realized she hadn’t been to the Hill—
Los álamos,
that home of poplars—for how long? Had unconsciously boycotted the place since Brice came home with his news of Kip. And hadn’t been here even for a couple of years before that. What did she think, her grandmother was going to live forever? Life proposed changes, constants, and the uneasy middles between. While her pursuit of Kip seemed doomed to failure, at least it could prompt a reunion with this woman she loved. It was always worth running the gauntlet of mixed feelings she had about the nuclear lab in order to visit Granna. She knew about the research that proceeded down at the ends of these numerous service roads she saw on her way up the mesa, disappearing behind chain-link fences with official signs that read
No Trespassing Danger Live Explosives.
Yet most everyone she loved best in this world either came from here or had some hand in building it.

She guessed her way to Pear Street, parked beside the cottage, and rested her head against the steering wheel for a moment before gathering herself to start up the walk. Lights burned welcomingly in the windows of the house. She knocked on the door. Brice’s mother in her arms seemed thinner than ever—ethereal, somehow. Ariel apologized for not phoning ahead to let her know she was coming, but Granna would have none of it.

“This is your house,” she said, and once inside, Ariel knew she was right. For the first time in days a sudden ordinary calm settled over her. As if she’d been delivered onto solid ground from a world that was wildly whirling. “What brings you to New Mexico?”

“Everything and nothing.”

“Well, that’s exact if vague.”

“You look radiant as ever.”

“Mountain air and faith—you know me.”

“Doesn’t get better than that, does it?” She smiled, noticing her grandmother had let her off the hook.

“Have you eaten?”

“I’m famished.”

“Well, let’s do something about it.”

Ariel sat with her kin for several hours, catching her up on news from back east, though leaving out for the time being all the most salient points.

Next morning the air in Los Alamos was pristine, washed by light Saturday winds. Ariel, having slept, was greeted in her grandmother McCarthy’s kitchen by the welcome sight of milk, peaches, and cereal. Granna’s question from the night before was on the table, too, as if it had been set there with the checkered napkin and white bowl. As difficult to answer as it was reasonable to ask. What, then, had brought her to New Mexico?

Even as Ariel formed the first words of some obfuscation, the truth overwhelmed them. “You must know who Kip Calder is.”

“I know who he was.”

“Was?”

“What mother wouldn’t know who her son’s best friend growing up was. Why do you ask?”

Ariel paused. So many questions begged to be asked, but she held back lest they come flying in chaotic multitudes. Nor was it her place to be the one to reveal that Brice, her son, was not after all the father of her granddaughter. Or was it? God bless the child, there were no maps for this part of the journey, either.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Kip Calder, heavens. Maybe thirty years ago.”

“That long?” Her heart sank.

“Brice fell out of touch with him. They were born the same day, Brice and Kip, did you know? I was always of two minds about Kip, couldn’t ever figure the boy out. He was a good student, very smart, smarter than most. Troubled kid, though, always getting your father into trouble. They ran away once, hot-wired a neighbor’s car and took a joyride almost to Wyoming, until they finally crashed it. Kip was pretty badly injured if I remember right.”

“My father never told me that one.”

“No, I suppose he didn’t.”

Ariel lightly laughed.

“I heard Kip died in Vietnam.”

“Not true,” Ariel said.

“You’re sure?”

“Didn’t Brice tell you he saw Kip when he was here a few years ago?”

“Maybe so, could be. Did you know your grandfather died thirteen years ago?”

Ariel nodded, worried by this unexpected cognitive slippage, as she poured orange juice into, of all things, a
Deep Space Nine
glass. She had to remember that conversation with Granna was an up-and-down business, moving with no warning from sheer lucidity to consummate forgetfulness. Those prune-headed space barkeeps, what were they called? Ferengi? She poured juice into her grandmother’s glass. Odo, shape shifter. All of it ripped off from the Greeks and Shakespeare. Shylock, Proteus. This was David’s fault. Now look who was cognitively slipping.

“He was a good Christian, your grandfather. I’m sure he’s in Heaven waiting for all of us.”

“So how have you been feeling, Granna?” changing the subject away from both Brice’s father and her own.

“Have you seen Bonnie Jean yet?”

“Don’t forget, I just got here last night. We’ll call her after breakfast, would that be good?”

“If you like, dear. We’ll do whatever you want to do, since you’re my unexpected guest and wonderful granddaughter.”

Ariel immediately rose from her chair, went over to this splendid old woman, and, leaning down, gave her such a strong embrace that Granna whimpered slightly.

“I’m sorry,” releasing her, taken aback by the vigor of her own affection.

“Not to worry. I don’t break that easy.”

Which caused Ariel momentarily to consider discussing her pregnancy with Granna. Who could be wiser, more forgiving, understanding? Although she would have but one position regarding the abortion idea.

“Do you believe in Christ yet, Ariel?” Her cataracted eyes were full of rich earnestness.

“Since last night?” Ariel managed.

These tangents were as angular as ever.

“Since anytime you allowed him into your heart,” she said with utmost quiet vigor.

“I’m trying.” Her unwed pregnancy as a possible subject slipped back into the realm of impossibility.

“You don’t have to try. Don’t have to do anything. You allow him in, he comes in. You believe, he saves you. Done, finished. Praise, hallelujah. Your grandfather died these thirteen years ago and I certainly didn’t want to live thirteen years longer than he did—”

“But if you hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here together.”

Mrs. McCarthy paused. “True. But Ariel, I’m thinking of John, chapter six, verse seventy or thereabouts.
Jesus answered them, Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spake of Judas Iscariot… for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.
Jesus knew thirteen was the traitor’s number, a number fit for a devil. Did you ever notice that there are twelve months?”

“I, of course—” Ariel marveled at how Granna’s freewheeling mind might carry them anywhere.

“Not thirteen months, twelve. Thirteen’s too many. Twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve tones in the musical scale. Twelfth night at Epiphany, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve gates of Heaven, twelve steps to sobriety. Thirteen worries me.”

If she knew the Bible, Ariel might have been able to say something apropos to interrupt this tumultuous flow. Instead, she said, “I’m surprised numerology fits in with your belief in Christianity and everything. You sure you’re not just a touch pagan, Granna?”

“You sound like your father.” She got up, opened the cabinet, retrieved her bottle of Tanqueray, waved it at Ariel who said, “No, well, why not, yes, okay, a little,” remembering she was here to find Kip, not Christ.

Let gin be wine, let pipe serve as censer. They sipped their spiked juice and wandered—as each was eminently capable of doing—from idea to idea.

“Schiller knew all about it, but then Schiller knew everything there was to know about everything.”

“Knew about what?”

“Eleven’s the number of sin. Thirteen’s the witches’ number. But heavenly Jerusalem has twelve golden gates.”

While they didn’t get drunk, they didn’t stay sober, either. Ariel weighed the reality anchor, as it were, and coursed along on a stream of affectionate ideas with her charmed wacko grandmother. Kip, Brice, Jessica, and everyone else in the world was asided, set as if on a nearby riverbank, while this two-paddle floating opera of straddling generations drifted by, free and unmoored for a few hours.

This used to be his secret boyhood sanctuary, Marcos told Kip. He and his younger sister, Elena, nicknamed Lanie during her brief life, were inseparable best friends. But Lanie refused to ride down in the lower pasture with him, much less stalk around the tumbledown fieldhouse waging gun battles with driftwood sticks culled from the rio flatbanks. She took no end of ribbing from her brother about her unfounded fears, yet always maintained a good distance between herself and the adobe. Carl and Sarah never bothered her about it, but Uncle Delfino once told the children it was an ominous place—

—What’s
ominous?

—Means
scary,
Marcos chimed.

—a scary place, Delfino continued. —Because the last person who lived there was an ogre who had powers—
Itoayemu,
they called this ogre—

—What’s
ogre?

—Means
very scary.

—and at night, when no one was out and about except for Santo Niño, not a chap to trifle with, either, this ogre would lumber around dragging his hairy foot behind him, like this—

And Uncle Delfino gimped in circles, snorting and huffing.

—making curses on little children’s heads, especially children who hadn’t behaved themselves during the day.

—That’s enough now, Sarah interrupted. —No limping ogre with evil powers ever lived in that old fieldhouse, Lanie, unless maybe your uncle used to live down there. But you two should stay out of there anyway.

—How come? asked Marcos, his voice back then still soprano.

—Because it’s not safe.

—Not safe, you say? Delfino asked, his eyes rounded and the ravines at the corners of his lips deepening into an ironic frown. —You hear that, kids? Their uncle couldn’t help himself, —You children had better listen to your mother.
Itoayemu.

Marcos remained unconvinced. For months he assured his sister there was nothing to be afraid of, that he would protect her from any evil, that he’d hung garlic on the plank doors and painted them blue to ward off spirits. Elena’s fear was stronger than Marcos’s promises, however, and though she rode with him bareback on unbroken horses far out into the adjacent plains where scorpions and yappy coyotes lived, she would not accompany him to the fieldhouse. She’d steal corn from pueblo gardens with him for the heck of it, but wouldn’t go down to the adobe. She would swim right under Nambé Falls flashing like blue tinsel in the tumbling mist. She would even play stupid games with Marcos—she who hated games because she didn’t like losing and didn’t enjoy winning—because she infinitely preferred games to visiting the fieldhouse.

—You’re being silly, he’d chide, as they played poor-man’s golf.

—Not as silly as you, she’d respond, smacking the rawhide ball with a putter carved from a fallen fence post.

As it turned out, the old adobe would become the one place in all Nambé where anyone’s seclusion could be assured, since no one entered it after Lanie drowned in a heavy spring runoff flood that came flying unexpectedly down the creek. Marcos discovered his lifeless sister, wet, muddy, as gangly as a newborn foal dropped from a mare that hadn’t yet tongued its eyes open. The flood had caught her in its furious arms upstream, near the mother ditch where the girl had been mucking about by herself. Churning detritus in its gray maw, its gorged water carried her in a roar of plunging stones and tires and tin cans and tangled branches torn from riverside willows. Swept into the murderous brown clot, she was delivered right beside the very fieldhouse she so preposterously shunned.

With Elena gone, the Montoya family changed forever. Sarah was for years unspeakably defeated, to be resurrected only by the slowly evolving idea that she could help Lanie by helping others. Carl and Marcos were stupefied, voiceless, and threw their grief into daily work. Though Delfino assured young Marcos he made up that
Itoayemu
ogre story, nothing could persuade the boy to enter the fieldhouse again, however much he once delighted in its intoxicating gloom and mystery.