Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [65]
Alone one morning, a Friday in August, he drew with a stick Elena in the soft adobe mud. And beside it, Ariel. He looked at the two words and, again shepherding thoughts that were outside his unfatherly rights, wished both of them peace. Peace beyond all understanding, as Wagner had sometimes said, in the Buddhist blessing. Then, before Marcos happened to come down with Franny, or Sarah, or Carl, or anyone else, he smoothed the names over with the palm of his hand.
Years ago a woman with straight silver hair, framing a sunned oval face and spacious cobalt eyes, walked into a room to find her husband, his head bowed as if in prayer, illuminated by lamplight, studying a piece of literature. Peering over his shoulder, she read aloud, —“Hot deals on cool stuff.” The man pretended to ignore her, as now he recalled. Thinking back, he only wished he could hear her clear, strong voice once more. He would give a year off whatever was left of his life to relive just one such typical, even banal exchange as they had that evening.
—Agnes, he complained.
—“Factory closeout blowout sale of a lifetime”?
—Please, I’m reading.
—So you are, she needled Delfino, who shuffled the catalog then concentrated again on studying this gaudy illustrated page, which offered a free quiver with every purchase of a smooth-shooting, one-cam, superstrike Bear bow. —What cool stuff have we here?
—Nothing, some guns and bows.
—Why you reading about guns and bows?
He refused to respond. She walked away, then returned and asked the question again.
—History, all right? It interests me.
This was dusk, after dinner. Was before bed, when they used to sit together in the bungalow’s small living room. The early eighties, a time when their valley world had gone from reticent to terribly reticent. When neighbors didn’t need to speak with one another about what might be going on down at the base, or why Roswell, over to the east of the mountains, had become the capital of night sightings of the inexplicable. This was dusk, when their windows and doors were left open from May through September, and sometimes of a summer night they could hear other aging couples arguing, or a baby screeching, or young marrieds coupling, or some cat in heat mewling, or a bitch dog barking in the distance under the sumptuous diffusion of stars. When, in their hearts, they knew that the outside world had forgotten them and they remembered themselves only upon hearing—whether by design or mistake—other Tularosans, people or beasts.
Delfino recollected her pressing further the next day, catching him again hunched over the catalog. —You never showed this much interest in the history of guns and knives and combat gear before. He remembered her returning to stand behind him, quoting in a voice honeyed with soft sarcasm, —“Government surplus bargains. Veteran used gear that’s ready to serve you for mere dimes on the dollar.” Question is, are you ready to serve time for spending those dimes?
Look here now, he was reading a mail-order catalog, was all. Not against the law. A warehouse-overstock clearance pamphlet he’d received from an outfit with a post-office box up in Montana, for sportsmen who fancied owning, say, this night-vision monocular scope with infrared illumination, these cotton duck overalls in camouflage print, these thirty-round magazine sets for the carbines Delfino never really wanted or needed before, as such, but that had begun to enter his imagination as something he might not be averse to owning. If only for their collector’s value, he might rationalize.
—“Bowie knife prices slashed to the bone”? That’s clever, Agnes harried further, knowing