Ariel's Crossing (47 page)

Something Agnes might have said. Or read somewhere. But no. It was Delfino’s spontaneous philosophy just now, and Agnes was behind the thought because Agnes lived on inside him. If only he could share a few words with her, get her take on what to do. One thing was certain. She would want him to look out for his brother’s son and his friend’s daughter.

“They’re nearby. I can feel them,” Ariel whispered, placing her hand on his shoulder.

“Jesus. Don’t scare an old man like that.”

She hooked her arm through his free one.

“Thought you were asleep,” he said.

“I heard you go out.”

“Sorry. Tried to be quiet.”

Standing side by side with him, Ariel could feel how gaunt he was, how tenuous, really.

“You’re gonna have to leave here and meet with Kip in the morning,” he told her.

“That’s not what either of us wants. I’m standing for him now.”

“Well, it’s what I want.”

“Can I ask you a forward question?”

“Nothing to hide on a night like this.”

How dare she ask him such a thing? she thought, even as she said, “Why is it you don’t have any children?”

“What?”

Too late to stop now. Besides, hadn’t she come all this distance to put such questions squarely before herself?

“I mean, I’m assuming you don’t have children or else they’d be here with you. Or maybe they don’t agree with you about this—”

Delfino said, “We tried to have kids, my wife and me. We couldn’t.”

“But you wanted to?”

“We’d have had a dozen if it’d been in the cards for us. But it wasn’t. End of story.”

Ariel waited before pressing further. A meteorite stole across the sky, faintly perceptible in the deep blue.

“Did you ever think this ranch might be like a child, one that was kind of kidnapped from you and your wife?”

“No, can’t say I ever thought of it that way.”

“Probably a stupid idea.”

He hesitated, said, “Probably.”

“I guess your life would have turned out a lot differently if you’d had all those children you wanted.”

“Guess you’re right about that.”

“Let’s just say the ranch was a child. Even if you’d been able to raise it to maturity, you know there’d still come the day when you’d have to let it go.”

Delfino shifted his weight and hitched his shotgun up onto the saddle of his hip. “What’s all this talk about children, anyhow?”

“Just thinking aloud.”

“You never had any, did you?”

Ariel laughed uncomfortably.

“You will, though.”

“I never thought of myself as much of a mother type.”

“What type do you think of yourself as being?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, go on. You’re way too smart not to have some idea about who you are.”

“I thought I was the one who was supposed to be asking you the forward questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“You got to know Kip a little. Why’s he so afraid of me?”

“That’s how you suss it out.”

“You see it some other way?”

“He told me he thought you might be afraid of him, or disgusted with him, or like that.”

“Not disgusted.”

“Afraid, though.”

“Everything’s worthy of fear.”

“That’s probably why you’re so courageous about things.”

“Oh, no you don’t. I’m terrified. About everything. There’s nothing I’m not afraid of right now. I’ve never been so afraid in my whole life. You don’t get to take that away from me.”

“Not trying to. I happen to disagree, is all.”

Beautiful old man, she thought, as she’d thought before—or no, she’d thought something like that about Granna. Too bad Agnes hadn’t been able to bear them their dozen kids.

“I don’t like your gun,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

“Look, Delfino. I’m trying not to be afraid of Kip.”

“You should be, and shouldn’t.”

“That’s not saying much.”

“That’s saying it all. Any good thing in this life is to be feared and not feared. Doubted and trusted. Anything you’re not afraid of isn’t worth the time even thinking about. I’m a whipped dog. You should listen to me because of that, if nothing else.”

They heard movement out toward the north, beyond the farthest skeleton outbuilding of the old rancho, and also some scuttering stone down in the basin below where the sergeant had withdrawn hours before. Neither spoke to the fact, other than perhaps through a separate conversation of tightening grips and involuntary catching of breath. Each was either too afraid or too dauntless to speak to these little incursions, it didn’t matter whether or which.

Delfino did, however, shock Ariel by asking, “Why would you even consider scrapping your kid?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Marcos told you.”

“No, sixth sense. I saw how nauseated you were riding in here, even though you tried to hide it. Saw you getting sick and then well again real fast. I might not have kids of my own, but I been around. Anybody planning on having a baby wouldn’t do what you’re doing.”

Ariel sighed.

“So, why scrap it? Doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s a pretty personal question.”

“I thought we were having a forward talk. What’s to lose?”

Ariel didn’t ease her grip on Delfino’s arm. “You mean by your asking that question, or by my having a kid?”

“Kid.”

“Pretty much everything. My life, my freedom, my days.”

“Nights, too. So I hear.”

“My nights.”

“Your mind.”

She laughed. “Yes. Definitely my mind.”

“What else.”

“That isn’t enough?”

“I’m sure there’s more. Like your loneliness, selfishness, things like that.”

“Did Kip ever tell you why he did what he did?”

“Ask him yourself. What I do know is that he wouldn’t want you to walk his same path. And by the way, Ariel?”

“Yes?”

“Ranches aren’t children. I appreciate the idea. But they’re just rocks and wood and nails and glass and boundary markers.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Starting to.”

“Maybe it would be better if you thought about it both ways.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that if you—” but the voices behind them cut through the night like the onset of a sudden fever. No sooner did they turn around than someone spoke loudly from down in the wash ravine to the south, and someone else—Jim—shouted a universal order for calm. Marcos came running from inside the house, crying out Ariel’s name and his uncle’s. There was a flurry of buffeting against the air. Ariel reached out for Marcos and caught his hand before another hand shoved her from behind, toppling her forward onto the parapet and knocking the wind out of her. Different dark forms struggled above her. There was moaning. Somebody shouted. Shocked calm, fresh chaos. She’d lost any sense of where Marcos could be, though Delfino Montoya was there, stumbling with her, tripping as the shotgun he dropped discharged its own brisk flare while the moon breached the ridge hard by Sierra Blanca.

Part IV
The Forever Returning
New York, Tularosa Basin, Los Alamos
to Nambé
1996–2000

SINGING AND PENNYWHISTLES
and gusts of laughter. Three generations of merrymakers sat at a long table centered by a big frosted cake. A pile of forks and stack of plates stood beside an old redware bowl heaped with melting vanilla ice cream.
Happy birthday to you
—roughly harmonizing their way through the familiar tune—
happy birthday, dear Miranda,
and after she blew out all three candles, cheers resounded in the room. Miranda clapped and giggled, her blue eyes beaming, as her father began to cut the cake. What a party. Sarah took the family photographs, which would be preserved in an album for this girl to view years later with an altogether different cast to those eyes. An adult’s knowing look, one that would register memories of her birthday in that first March of the new millennium. Later that evening, Sarah would upload digital images of the best shots and e-mail them to Miranda’s grandfather Brice so he could share in the celebration.

He would easily recognize most of the faces on his laptop screen. Ariel and Marcos and all the rest of the family, including Jessica, out visiting for the grand occasion. Some of the others he might not know, never having met any of the new ranch hands or the foreman, Diego Chavez, who’d come on at Pajarito to take over where Kip had left off. But whether or not he recognized Diego, he’d be reminded again of Kip Calder, the honorary Montoya whose suggestion it’d been to give their granddaughter her name. Miranda Montoya. Had a nice alliterative lilt to it, a good music. Not to mention its origins, like Ariel’s, in
The Tempest
—another way Kip, who’d never fancied his daughter’s name, had made one more fond compromise with his own revered child. Fine and dandy, though Marcos insisted that he was going to name their one on the way, and it wasn’t going to have any goddamn literary allusions. Kip Montoya? Maybe, maybe not.

But look at this. If there had always been a strong likeness between Kip and Ariel, little Miranda was a beautiful, feminine reincarnation of both. These photos of Miranda revived memories not only of Ariel back when she was this young, but of Kip back when he was vibrant with health, ready to take on the world. The images from those insane desert days three and a half years ago were as sharply clear as these of the birthday party on Brice’s screen. First seeing Kip in that claustrophobic military infirmary was like something straight out of Kafka, he’d thought at the time, and said as much. Granted, Kip had committed a federal offense and his accomplices were resisting being taken into custody on similar charges, but that didn’t mean he could be put to work luring the others out of Dripping Spring. Not legally. The fact he’d baited and switched, agreeing to talk to Ariel Rankin and Delfino Montoya, implying he might be able to help the MPs but then instead urging his daughter and friends to stay their course, rankled the hell out of his captors. But it was their own fault. Their risk and loss.

Kip might have flown off the handle in any direction at the sight of his so-called lawyer, Brice McCarthy, so it’d come as a relief when he tried, failed, then finally managed to stand and awkwardly embrace him, Kip’s intravenous tube and infusion bag getting joggled in the process. The door was locked behind them, a very unnecessary precaution.

“So this is my lawyer.”

“Pro hac vice,
unless you have another one.”

“What a world.”

They smiled.

“How’re Ariel and the others?”

“I’ve been trying to find out, but I’m in the dark, too.”

“Are we out of here?” Kip asked.

“First I have to get a judge to review charges and set bail. You look awful.”

“Never felt better.”

“Come on.”

“I feel like hell, but I’m not the priority. You think you can work out something so Delfino can leave with more than just promises that the DOD will reconsider his case?”

“I read his letter and documents on the way here with Carl. It looks like a straight uphill battle to me.”

“That’s the kind of case you liberal lawyers are supposed to take on, right?”

Brice warmly smirked at his old friend. Creep. Next thing you know Kip was going to call him
boy,
just like he used to when they were punk kids.

“Obviously I’ll try to help Delfino. Ariel’s my first concern, though,” Brice said. “They tell me you spoke with her.”

Kip nodded, a bit sheepish about having urged her onto a heading Brice and Jessica wouldn’t necessarily have advocated.

“What’d she say?”

“She said she was fine.”

“Did she want to surrender?”

“No,” Kip murmured, then felt compelled to confess.

Carl, who’d been allowed into the room and had stood quietly by the door, said, “Kip, I thought I knew you, but you’re just as crazy a fuck as my brother.”

Kip stared at the blue floor until Brice broke the lull. “If I know Ariel, she would’ve stuck it out with them anyway. Not in her nature to abandon people,” forgetting for the moment just how abandoning of him, Jessica, and her grandmother his daughter had recently been.

Did Kip hear a gibe against himself in Brice’s words? Perhaps not, but even if one were intended he wouldn’t for a moment defend himself against the truth of the innuendo. What did begin to bother him was the possibility he’d urged Ariel to remain at Dripping Spring because it would delay their reunion. Pathetic, if that were the case. He hardly knew anymore.

Brice’s proposed journey out to the former Montoya ranch site in the role of negotiator never transpired, of course, since while he and Carl were conferring with Kip, the order was passed on to bring the standoff to an end later that same night. White Sands had ascertained through background checks that the cache of arms the intruders had with them in the mountains might run a bit deeper than that sole shotgun the old man carried around. Seems he’d bought some pretty fancy, if outdated, hardware over the years. “If they brought his whole gun cabinet with them, they could put on quite a show,” Jim’s commanding officer told him. Everyone agreed the best course would be to storm them while they were still asleep, or at least drowsy, in predawn, when the light was weakest.

Delfino knew what was happening even as it went down. White heat in his shotgun saturated the charge after the firing pin struck the primer. It flamed through the flash hole, igniting the powder. The pressure behind the cartridge rose so fast it began to bloom, blistering hot. The brass end of the casing swelled until it filled the steel chamber walls of the barrel, and the case neck expanded so as to ram forward the buckshot housing. The only thing free to move, in the face of all this pressure, was the load, which accelerated from the gut of the gun. It was born in a flash of heat, spinning like a mad dervish. Its blast pierced the air. One thousandth of a second passed before some of the shot tore like tiny nettled wasps into his flesh.

All this occurred under a setting moon. Silver light from the Remington offered brief, brilliant illumination, then everything lay veiled under starlight once more. Delfino clutched at his neck and shoulder in disbelief. Ariel, having taken Delfino’s hand when he reached out, toppled with him as he collapsed on the stone fence. He was gibbering when she pulled his head into her lap and shielded him, enfolding the man in her arms. Feeling the warm wet slick of blood on her hands and face, she screamed for help, and Marcos yelled at the men to hold their fire. Jim was shouting the same order. Someone jumped, someone else dropped to a knee. A third sprinted forward to crouch beside the fallen ones by the rampart, while Marcos, who held a rifle, threw it, good and hard, down on the ground and himself ran to where these men and this woman were standing or kneeling or writhing under the night sky.