Ariel's Crossing (34 page)

“We’ll get through.”

“Ariel?”

“I’m willing if you are.”

“Delf, you’re sure?”

His uncle was already out into the volcanic stonefield. Ariel and Marcos pushed on, caught him up.

With no inkling that Ariel’s father had shared the same thoughts earlier that day, Marcos speculated that Dripping Spring might well be in ruins. He said he hoped his uncle was prepared to find a mess. All those winter snows, drought and rains on and off, and what about the broiling winds year after year? Surely the elements hadn’t been merciful, had hammered, chafed, baked, scraped, and finally decimated the place.

His uncle disagreed. “Weather’d hurt it but I doubt it’d take it all the way down. More likely if it’s been destroyed, it’s been destroyed by men.”

Built back at the end of the thirties with the help of laborers from Las Cruces, the hacienda had been made of adobe over lath. Its architecture had acquiesced to ornament only in the form of some simple porch columns with balustrade and whittled spindles. Otherwise its structure was all simplicity, meant to last. Its whitewashed walls were as thick as those of Fort Selden at Radium Springs, Delfino said. The few photographs that had survived their forced exodus were as cherished as any heirloom. In them one could see the raised cistern they used in summer as a swimming hole. One could see young Agnes waving from beside a windmill with
The Kerometer, Chicago
painted on its rudder. A few other adobe structures looked very alike, a barn and stable attached—all built long before Marcos and Ariel were born, indeed even before any of Ariel’s parents were born. Delfino had built it as the down-state Montoya ranch, to be passed by his children into the hands of his children’s children.

In the absence of heirs, land becomes your flesh, he believed. Land reflects your soul, animates your soul. He carried with him the original deed to the spread and had it in mind, once they were there, to sign it over to Marcos. He could die in peace then, with some dignity restored, knowing he’d left an inheritance of earth to his family, just as his father had done.

At the summit of a rock-strewn rise Delfino reined his horse to a halt. This was it. The military range perimeter fence ran along the facing crest as far as the eye could see.

“Last chance to turn back,” Delfino told them.

“You’re not getting rid of us, old man,” Marcos said, and Ariel agreed.

“It’s the last time I’m gonna ask.”

“Good.” Handing over his reins to Delfino, Marcos dismounted and walked back to the packhorse. He whispered into its ear calming singsong nonsense as he unbuckled the leather pouch lashed to the saddlebags and fetched a pair of wire cutters. With the words “Here goes nothing,” he tramped across a shallow gorge whose bed was the finest alkali, which crunched underfoot like salt, then up the face of an eroded fault scarp. Scree sprayed behind him. He climbed the last of the little hogback on all fours while Ariel and his uncle watched in the saturating moonlight.

At the crest he knelt, removed his felt dakota, and ran his free hand over the back of his neck. From this vantage he could see for miles into the military reservation, far to the south, and without putting binoculars to the viewfield he ascertained where some bunkers were situated. Some looked forbidding and sophisticated, while others seemed crude, like squatters’ cabins. Tricky sons of guns, or lazy. He snipped the barbed wire, making an opening wide enough for them to ride through.

As he walked back to join his companions, Marcos thought about Kip. Hoped the poor devil was all right. At least it was a mild night and, walking, he was under the radar. Riders, too, eluded radar, but without doubt the military had surveillance equipment around here sophisticated beyond what anyone could know. They could probably see your wringing hands from a satellite. Could hear your gulping throat through a digital audio sensor. Maybe, maybe not. Ariel had so far put a brave face on it, but she must be worried sick. She was, he thought as he reached his companions, inspiring, was she not? He had to wonder if he’d do as well in her position, but then remembered that was precisely what he was doing. Birds of a reckless feather. And where was Mary right now? Where had her false wings carried her? No, stay focused. “Let’s go.”

The klieg-bright moon showed their way. They moved down the near ridge, along the white sand arroyo road, until they found a gentle fold where they could double back toward the forefront of the bluff. Then they came to Marcos’s breach in the five-row barbed-wire fence. Even without a flashlight, they could make out a white sign nailed to the post:

Peligro se prohibe la entrada

Campo de tiro armas defuego en uso

And another, several posts upbasin:

Danger
Unexploded Munitions
Keep Out

Marcos halted and Ariel followed suit so Delfino could enter first. He did, with slow surreal dignity. Jet indigo and dim silver in ranging ephemeral threads were the last colors woven across the sky over the western mountains, colors that clung to the cirrus like psychedelic streamers. The riders, consumed by thoughts as different as the oily pigments ranging over their heads, advanced into a part of the valley that had been sequestered from the public for half the century. Fifteen miles more—much easier miles than those they just negotiated. Ariel couldn’t help but glance around, astounded by the secluded peacefulness of the scene.

In the name of Matthew, the name of Mark, in the names of Luke and Saint John. In the name of the prophet Jeremiah, confined by the King of Judah during the war in which Babylon besieged Jerusalem. In the name of Paul who wandered and Noah who would not have but that he had no choice. In the name of Christopher, patron saint of travelers. In the name of any saint possessed of ears to listen, hear my question, I beseech thee. When will the Lord’s children ever learn to stay put?

Bonnie Jean, who found herself covering Ariel’s watch, argued, “I never ran away from you, did I?”

“You were always a fine young lady, Bonnie. I’ve never said otherwise.”

No denying that. But listen to this. John Howard Payne, who was destined one day for sainthood, good great American that he was, knew whereof he spoke. “Oh yesh,” said Granna, whose lispings and likings off-centered her speech less and less with every passing sentence, it seemed. “John Howard Payne mortalized the idea.
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam … he it ever so humble, there’s no place like
—”

Bonnie smiled, she who always frowned on these routines in the past. How wonderful to hear her going off on one of her crazy jags this afternoon.

—but what she’d like to know was, just when and how had Ariel lost her will to stay home? While Mother didn’t express this verbally, the sigh she gave on learning that her granddaughter had probably spent the night in Nambé—given that she hadn’t answered at Pear Street when Bonnie phoned to find out how it had gone with Kip Calder—was a sigh that meant, For crying out loud, what’s going on with the world?

“I wish I knew,” said Bonnie, able to interpret her wordless language.

Millennial madness, no doubt, thought Granna. Things such as this were augured. The sane would act crazy. The crazy would see the light. But this wasn’t like Ariel. She wasn’t a believer, no, though she seemed to be trying, in her way. She was possessed of common Christian wisdom, wasn’t she?

“Remember, I told you she went there last night to find Kip,” Bonnie said.

“Nobody will ever find Kip Calder, mar my words.”

Granna was amused by the missing consonant, but it made her all the more conscious of Ariel’s unhappy absence, since Ariel would have picked up on the vagrant meaning of the phrase, might even have lobbed a little comeback.
Mar your words? Aren’t they marred enough, Gran?
And that would have been a sweet kindness, making all this business of recovery roll along with smoothing laughter. As it was, Bonnie caught a glimpse of her grin and gently smiled, tipping her large head to the side like an inquiring cat.

“Like I say, she thinks he’s her real father.”

“What about Brice?”

“He adopted her.”

“I don’t believe any of it. I’m worried for the poor girl.”

They were sitting on the convalescent center’s patio, at the far end. A large glass vase of blue delphiniums on the table, paper cups of cranberry juice, some not-too-fresh meringues. Brice had called to apologize for hanging up and to let Bonnie know that he and Jessica would be coming out next week.

“Home is where the heart is.” Bonnie recommenced their game, hoping maybe to fill Ariel’s role here.

“Keep the home fires burning,” without a pause.

“Land of the free, home of the brave.”

Not bad. “Charity begins at home.”

Bonnie Jean’s smile broadened, an unusual sight. Made her face kind of hurt, a thought that broadened it more. Wasn’t this a bit ridiculous, playing games while the universe whirled out of control? Not for a moment. Getting her mother to smile, that was the finest thing. Maybe she should try a little harder to get along with her brother, cut Brice some slack. Couldn’t hurt more than that smile did. “When Johnny comes marching—”

“What good’s a home if you’re never in it?”

“Never heard that one before.”

“Bonnie, this breeze’s a little brisk. Let’s go back in.”

“Can’t stay put, can we, Saint McCarthy?” Bonnie teased.

Her mother responded with a tangled grin. It was touching of Bonnie Jean to engage in a bit of word-gaming to help an old lady pass the time. All would be perfect if her granddaughter were here and this notion about Kip Calder could be disavowed for the rubbish it surely was. Her life and the lives of her family had always been solid, unquestionable. Yet she felt less certain, now, that things were quite as stable as she’d always believed.

Doubt was a monster she had little experience wrestling. So instead, after Bonnie took her leave, she lay a blanket of faith over herself, over her memories, and wrapped Ariel within its folds as well. After all, tomorrow was Sunday. Day of rest.

Aided by the scant shade of a high thin temporary cirrus cloud, Kip rested his eyes. But the cloud passed, and again the sun dazzled and blinded him from its billet in the sky. He pretty nearly couldn’t see anything anyhow. His vision had, along with everything else, only gotten worse as the long slow day progressed from Lonnie Moon Peak, or thereabouts, past the wildly misnamed Garden Spring streambed. Garden of rocks and stones and pebbles and sand and dust.

Palms down, he lowered himself onto a dry sedimentary shelf. He unshouldered the beige canvas pack, now soaked brown with sweat. His canteen was light and its water more than warm on his tongue. Knees against his forehead, he sat in a heap. When he looked up he saw that the angel was out there, just as she had been since early afternoon. He looked down at his powdery boots. Didn’t remember his feet being quite that small. But there they were, two of them, inarguably measly. Somebody else’s feet. Couple of dead marmots.

He spat into his dustbowl palm. Looked like grasshopper spit. Only several streaks of sepia in an otherwise milky froth. Saliva that was mostly air.

He blinked hard and glanced over toward the east again. Yeah, still there. She kept her distance from him, having paralleled his course across the badland. Sunstroke dementia?

Leave me alone, he said, or thought he said.

She made no movement that would indicate whether she heard him or not. She stood, floated maybe, was little more than a white detail on the white horizon. Kip had been trying to shake her all through his second day out here. He sensed he knew that face with its pitiable haunted eyes, but he couldn’t place where he’d encountered it before. Had to think harder, think better, more clearly. No friendlies out here, random headings, copy? He said, or thought to say, Keep going, plenty of fuel left. Sure, he was getting some heavy surges. Incoming, affirmative, and yes the air was scrawled with tracers. But he’d blown down souvenirs along the way, pilotese for hits. It was give and take all the way. Kip was
no
rookie, no newcomer to the blasted heath. He looked for her again, but she wasn’t there. Good.

He unfolded the map and spread it out before him. Judging from where those radio towers were located on the topo and as he sighted them ahead on the peaks to his right, he’d come in a pretty fair distance, all things considered. He spat again and saw, this time, that his spit was not brown but red. Ran the back of his thumb over his gums and tongue and held his hand in front of his eyes, and yes it was blood. Not good.

Wagner once told him, —The only thing that elucidates history is blood. Blood inherits and dispenses history better than ideas have ever done. You can learn ideas and forget them. Whereas blood you can never learn nor ever forget. Blood’s the remnant of all that every human ever accomplished. Pippers like blood, so do Jollys. Oscar Deuces love blood, so do Slicks. The machines that kill and the ones that try to save love blood, is all I am saying. Daisy Cutters were put here on earth to rid men of blood, and Fox Mikes to keep it in them. LAU-68s slay your bloody ass while Sandys try to save it. KIA. MIA. KBA. So many words for so many things, but at the end of the day there’s only one word, and it’s either flowing in your veins or going down with you back into the earth. Dirt knows better what to do with most men’s blood than the donors ever did. Remember that. And remember to make sure you use your pissant allotment for positive capable intercept operations, man. You copy, blood? You got the snot?

Kip’s pulse raced in his temples, pounded in his neck, and it was as if his grandparents and his mother and father and Wagner and Jessica and Brice and the Montoyas and, yes, Ariel, all of them were risen within him, demanding that he act in a way that would make them proud. Losing a little blood never hurt anybody. Get up and get on.

He walked calmly at a thousand feet or ten thousand, who could tell the difference? His blood took on a voice and the voice said simply, Do this. And if he sank to a knee or hesitated, the blood drummed with greater weight and his ears were so burdened with the music of his blood that he found himself paralyzed, shotgun butt hard to his shoulder, double barrels silverblue down the headline, the ghost in white walking straight into the V of his sights, his finger at the first trigger colder than if he had plunged it, along with hand and arm to the shoulder, into a winter fishing hole up in the high Truchas Mountains.