Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [77]
Kip glanced around the table to see if anyone else picked up on it. None had, and none—aside from Sarah, who’d surely seen it in the eyes of her patients on the Hill—would or could. Some things you can learn only from experience. Kip, who’d flown, then run, then walked, then literally crawled away from his inescapable war, now saw it sitting at the pleasant August evening table in the form of Delfino Montoya and wondered what lay behind it. He could feel one of his old episodes coming on, a slippage, gnawing like flame at his edges, but he didn’t want to be backdrafted into some drastic scenario. Delfino was saying something directly to him, yet he couldn’t hear. Then, as if Kip managed to grasp the delicate, broken quadrant of his mind and lift it clear of that growing flame, he forced himself back into the present.
The man across the table was saying, “Lots of great people come from not so great places—you all right?” to which Kip answered, “Of course, thanks,” which in turn led Delfino to begin considering what had already traversed his thoughts over these past months, and even during the long morning stretch of his drive.
And that was this. Were he to tell his brother what he was going to do next week, Carl would talk him out of it. That’s goddamn lunatic crap, he’d calmly shout. Sarah would agree with Carl, if not in those precise terms, Marcos with Sarah, and Delfino would be left either to capitulate to their collective wisdom or to march forth onto White Sands range not just alone but more than alone, pushing on against the best wishes of what family he had left on earth.
But what about this Kip Calder? He was the victim of Vietnam, not War Two, granted, but of war nevertheless. Maybe, Delfino mused, Kip would be kind enough to hold his last will and testament for him, and the letters he’d written, see to it that Sarah execute his wishes if indeed he didn’t come back out of Dripping Spring in one piece, which he figured reasonably he might not. Maybe this remnant of one war would be chivalrous toward the remnant of another. Kindness of strangers—wasn’t unheard-of. In fact, it seemed the best way for Delfino to proceed. He saw in Kip’s eyes the depths of a man who’d borne burdens in the past and might be equal to a burdensome charity case now. The Montoyas had taken him in when he was down and out. Perhaps he’d indulge an old man a similar favor.
After dinner, as always, the brothers sat on the portal and smoked beneath the stars that framed the serrate silhouette of the eastern mountains beyond Nambé pueblo. Kip sat with them. They prattled on wonderfully about people Kip didn’t know and never would. He was reminded of nights he’d passed aboard ships, sitting on an idle deck under luminous constellations and a half moon that itself looked like a sail on some floating skiff. Ships above, ships below. Here the veranda rocked because of the wine Kip sipped and because the slippage was still there, nearby, he could feel it. Yet the moment seemed rich with chance, though he couldn’t say why, just as any sailor’s starry moment of reflection before dawn brought its endless struggles and possible storms. Kip thought of his wife. What he’d told Marcos was true. He would probably never see her again. Hadn’t he eaten cayenne chicken with her once in Hanoi? And her boys—the elder in San Diego now, the younger in Port Arthur,
Texas—prospering immigrant youths who’d always been grateful if perfectly withdrawn. What would he tell them had he one last chance? What would he say to his distant wife? To Jessica? And Ariel?
Kip rose from the creaky rawhide chair and shook hands goodnight. He said, “My pleasure,” to Delfino who asked if he might come to the fieldhouse in the morning and have a look-see at the restoration.
“I thought about fixing it up myself way back when, before I left Rancho Pajarito instead for other terrain,” Delfino continued, then abruptly grew as pensive and mute as this fellow Calder who left the Montoya brothers to walk