Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [143]
“She was supposedly in Denver.”
“And now she turns up in Los Alamos. You see, I must’ve been right that time in Albuquerque. She was there.”
“Probably she’s in Los Alamos because of Clifford. She was always the most independent-minded of you kids, but everybody needs family.”
“Is that what the lady said? That Mary was there because of Uncle Clifford?”
“I just assumed.”
“Well, you should go. You could tell Dad you’re going to visit Clifford. You haven’t been to see Uncle Cliff in the longest time.”
“I don’t like lying to your father.”
“That’s my point. It wouldn’t have to be a lie. There’s not one good reason you shouldn’t go and there are a hundred reasons you should. I’ll go myself if you watch after the kids.”
“It’s not your responsibility.”
“It is if you’re not willing. Look, why don’t you ask John to go with you?”
“He’s got his job.”
“So he takes a couple days off. I’m sure he’d be honored to be asked. I’ll do the house stuff till you get back.”
“You’ve got it all planned out, don’t you.”
“Ma, you have no choice. She’s your daughter.”
“Russell’s gonna be plenty mad.”
“You don’t know that for sure. You might be surprised. He could think it’s the neatest thing his wife’s done in years.”
Rebecca stirred from her chair. Without saying another word, she walked into her bedroom, closed the door. Rose put ice in two glasses and poured tea into one of them. Half an hour passed, the wall clock ticking methodically, the fridge humming, cutting off, humming again. Then the bedroom door opened—Rose could hear its hinges from where she sat—and her mother returned to the kitchen.
“You want your tea now?” She got up to replace the melted ice with fresh cubes.
“Thank you.”
“And?”
“Let’s call Johnny,” said Rebecca.
He walked dead into the Oscuras. From flats to harsh verticality, gray stone stabbing upward. He walked, stopped walking. He stood wobbling in the center of a light-duty road, holding the map up to his face. White Sands range was depicted in the most sumptuous pale pink, with contour lines in brown and the few trails and roads in puce. He tried to hark but nothing came of the effort. His ears whistled, though there was no wind. He’d passed a second night beneath the stars, shivering in his flimsy skin from the cold, just as he shivered during the day from the heat. Knew he wouldn’t last much longer. The basin filled with a dusty sea of midmorning light.
There was a branching here. Twenty-one hundred and eighty feet above sea level, he determined, his head aswim. Farther up this service route were clusters of radio towers. Toward the left, out along the mesa head, was a seasonal washbed that crossed the forking road. If he followed this sandy furrow, it would drop him down to another, apparently smaller road. A shortcut, and the safest route, he figured. From there he’d round the eastern tip of Workman Ridge and head toward Dripping Spring, to Montoya’s disputed stead marked with an X like pirate treasure.
And then? And then, and then.
He took a drink from his flyweight canteen, kind of blindly folded the map, half-checked the compass once more to be certain he was reading things right, and began down the left crossroad. He caromed like some drunk. One foot, the other. He stumbled, sat down hard. Forearms on upjutting knees, he rested his head on his own flesh sawhorse. His breathing was reedy. His lips were drier than his tongue, but his tongue was as dry as the knuckle that he now listlessly gnawed.
Blood was caked on his wrist. Looked like a morbid Rorschach test. Didn’t know where it’d come from, but if he were a diviner he sensed he might be able to decipher its pattern. He knew he was delirious, and he knew probably the blood had merely flowed from his nose or gums and communicated nothing beyond his dire straits, but he liked the improbable delusion that this blood was somehow meaningful, a script legible to whoever might understand the lingo. The army had employed Navajos and Hopi and others from the region to encode secret communiqués during that first nuclear