A Phantom Herd
Page 27
Perhaps the prospect of tacos, an especially favorite food, made me so happy the evening after the Boy Scout Pow Wow that I invented a favorite game of mine-it had no name-whose purpose was to cross each row of large rocks in my mother's rock garden, she collected those on our trips to abandoned ranches and mines in Arizona, and I discovered that I liked to work my way across the stones, steadily and carefully, turning sharply and expertly at the end of the row and drop to the lower file of rocks, as though I were on a steep switchback track, Bright Angel Trail, for example, like those I had seen in the book Brighty of the Grand Canyon. There was a certain degree of confusion in my mind about whether I was a mule or a burro; I often confounded the two. But since mules and burros, especially those in the Grand Canyon, were surefooted, I must be, too; I made it a goal of mine never to let my 'hooves' miss touching a single rock, no matter which way my shoe would have to turn to do it, or if I would have to jam the toe of my sneaker in a hole, or twist my heel half way round. In fact, the more contorted the angle necessary, the better, for what I enjoyed most was the imperative, the absolute importance of touching each rock in a precise, unerring sequence. A large greenish hunk of copper ore, which the donkeys dropped down on, had to be followed by the standing slab of sandstone, a very tipsy platform, next to which there was a smooth brown rock, rather like an overcooked, oversized meatloaf. These were my precarious trails. If I had to wobble pigeon-toed along the edge of the white granite chunk like Charlie Chaplin, or straddle two knobs of basalt sideways, this increased my pleasure.
But the rock garden was crowded with at least five rows of twenty rocks each; weaving my way down without a single misstep was taxing. And if I slipped and touched the lower trail, it wasn't enough to simple replace my foot, I would have to start again at the top, all the while steeling myself for the need to make the next trip down perfectly.
In time the game became a horrible obsession and my missteps would lead me to a kind of nervous breakdown. I imagined by missing a single rock that I had actually fallen into the canyon and been crushed. If I had only fallen a short distance, I was certain I had broken a leg and my owner planned to shoot me. I limped away and hid behind the guava bushes.