Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [60]
Ridiculous, she thought, and then just as quickly responded, Ariel, don’t ridicule what you haven’t understood. She walked the length of the sacristy to lunge, like a swimmer reentering the world of air after diving into a deep pond, from the darkness of the church into the irreverent light of the plaza.
She passed the trickling acequia that coursed out in front of the santuario, and entered the church gift shop where she showed a woman behind the cash register her photograph of Kip and Brice. Had she heard of a man named Kip Calder? Nothing. Then over to the Potrero Trading Post whose front was decorated with ristras and a defunct Sinclair gas pump beside the screen door.
Ariel suspected that the man behind the counter had never seen the face in the photo he held before his eyes, though his hesitation suggested otherwise. Raymond Bal was his name, and what she didn’t know about this dark-eyed thin serious man was that his tardiness had to do with his being a thoughtful person who—having lived his whole life in Chimayó and having been asked similar questions over the years by other pilgrims come here in search of the miraculous—wanted merely to give her an honest answer.
When he said, unexpectedly, “I did, maybe,” she nearly dropped the ledger.
“Where? When?”
His Anglo wife had written a book about the history of Chimayó. Indeed, other friends and relatives of Raymond Bal had written books about the place, its penitentes, its curing dirt that made this the Lourdes of New Mexico, the center of annual treks on foot across miles in drenching rain or under heavy sun on Good Fridays.
But Raymond knew he couldn’t answer this weary young woman’s questions with any accuracy. “I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
“But you said—”
“Where’s he from?”
“Los Alamos.”
“A lot of people from the Hill come through here. What’s his name?”
“William Calder. His nickname was—is, Kip.”
“Don’t know that name, Calder. What about the other one?”
“McCarthy.”
“I really couldn’t say if I’ve seen him, either of them, I’m just sorry. I don’t know how to help you.”
The more Raymond thought about it, the less sure he felt about giving her any hope. The fact was, though he didn’t remember it, he had seen Brice three years earlier, back in ’ninety-three, when the man dropped in here to find Jessica and Ariel herself presents. Brice had bought them each Peruvian burial dolls. Odd gifts, he had thought. Nonindigenous and morbid, perhaps, but pretty with their serene cloth faces, legs and arms made of sticks, and clothing of woven, handpainted fabrics. Raymond had told Brice they brought good fortune, and so he had taken them home after meeting with Kip and presented them to Jess and Ariel along with bags of sacred soil, tierra bendita. Both wife and daughter were delighted. Ariel’s was a late birthday present, as she turned twenty-four that year, three years past the deadline that Jessica and Brice had set for themselves to share the secret about Kip with their mutual daughter, having agreed that her twenty-first would be the right time. For his part, Kip had been inside the Potrero Trading Post, too, that Easter. Bought a Popsicle. At the time Raymond thought how sick the poor fellow looked and how he hoped the healing posito dirt would help him, though he doubted it could.
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