Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [106]
Heart sinking, Ariel read Kip’s note. The Montoyas, young and old, looked at each other awkwardly. She slowly folded it, gave it back to Delfino, and said in a low, determined voice, “We’ve got to stop him.”
Marcos asked, “How long has he been gone, Delf?”
“Two, three hours? I don’t know. Like I say, I was asleep.”
“He can’t have gotten far.”
“Down here you don’t have to go very far to disappear.”
“Doesn’t matter. We have to look.”
Although morning was no longer in its infancy, and Delfino still had it in mind to depart that evening, they drove Ariel’s car up and down Route 54 looking for the well-intentioned bastard. But nothing doing. Nor did they dare ask around if anyone had seen a dark-eyed, sickly-looking man driving a shanghaied Ford pickup.
“We know where he’s gone,” Delfino said, back at the bungalow. “No point wasting more time. I’ll tell Kip you’re here when I hook up with him at Dripping Spring.”
“No way,” she blurted, taken aback by her brazenness.
Delfino stood unmoving.
“We might be more helpful to you than you think,” Marcos said.
Ariel added, “Don’t underestimate the strengths that come from what you think are weaknesses.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re not going alone. It’d be plain stupid.”
“Look, Marcos, I’m not stupid and I’m not smart. I’m decided, is all. I’d rather go in and find Kip myself.”
“Not wise.”
“Wisdom never got nobody anywhere except into trouble.”
Ariel thought, He’s not wrong. Socrates, Cassandra. “Well then, you can go by yourself, and Marcos and I’ll meet you there.”
“You wouldn’t know how to find the place without me.”
“That’s why we’ve got to come along. Because without you I’m afraid I’ll never find him, and I’m so close.”
Though he had no idea that this young woman had never so much as seen this father of hers, or spoken with him, Delfino was moved by her words. Both men looked at her sitting at that same kitchen table, her eyes red, her shoulders dropped in exhaustion but also in a kind of defiant commentary, hair wild from the night’s having blown and eddied it during the long drive, car windows rolled down to let in the cooling wilderness wind. It was the end of the discussion. She slept through what was left of the day on the old man’s bed, which smelled like damp raffia, as Marcos dozed on the sofa, his legs draped over the arm of the broken thing. When they woke, they found that Delfino had made them an afternoon breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. By six that evening they’d stowed supplies under a dun tarp in the flatbed of a borrowed truck, loaded the horses rented under false assurances into a trailer, and, like a landbound ship of fools, started for their entry point, arriving just before sunfall.
As they moved out onto the dirt road, Ariel sensed that nobody belonged here, not even rocketeers and ranchers. She shook her head to fend off misgivings. No need to think backward when everything was flying forward. But her worried eyes gazed both forward and back with democratic dismay. Who was it who’d written that life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think? It all seemed fairly tragicomic to Ariel at the moment. Prompted by that faraway light they’d seen, the three of them looked around at one another. Nobody said a word. None was going to concede the faintest hint of fear.
It did occur to Ariel to wonder what was pushing her so hard. Was it stubbornness or was it love, something more than a daughter’s benevolent passion, or was it pure curiosity driving her now, the need to know? Richard of Saint Victor believed that to love is to perceive. Granna had told her that one, and Ariel liked it. She wanted to see Kip, if only once, in order to perceive the man. Kinship was a crazy law unto itself. This was madness, she thought, but all families were steeped in madness. Hers was no exception.
The riders