Trinity Sight

by Jennifer Givhan

  She went in search of water. And Chance. Where was he sleeping?

  The next two compartments were empty, but the crackling of burning wood filtered through the tent’s zippered flap. She unzipped charily and peeked out into the cold night air. From a lawn chair in the mud, Chance hunched toward the firepit, poking at embers with a stick.

  “How’d you start a fire with rain-wet wood?” Calliope asked, only her face unzippered and visible, her nose already getting cold.

  Wide grin lines dimpled Chance’s face, though he didn’t look up toward Calliope but stared ahead at the fire. “Mujer, arisen from the dead.” He continued prodding the wood, a shadow replacing the smile across his face, his eyes glowing more serious than playful. “Perdóname, Calliope. I’m not supposed to call you that anymore.” She nodded, swallowing back the metallic taste in her throat, and unzipped the flap the rest of the way, stepped her newly booted feet onto the mud. Chance stood, motioned for her to sit on the chair, but she continued standing. He said, “I would tell you the dry wood is magic, but you’ve already accused me of sorcery. I don’t want you thinking I’m anything but a humble physicist. There was wood in the tent.”

  “Do you have any way of telling what time it is?”

  He shrugged, but said, “Look up,” motioning with his eyes.

  She craned her neck toward the sky, breathing in sharply. She had never seen so many stars in her life. The clouds and ash that had menaced the sky since the flash had disappeared. It was impossible, she knew, but there it was. The Milky Way they were part of, luminous in purplish gold, banding a quilt of bright lights. She breathed out slowly, “No light pollution.”

  “The way we were meant to see the night. A’shiwi call it the Great Snowdrift of the Skies.”

  “It’s beautiful.” She gazed in silence a few moments before she was troubled again. “How could the ash clear so quickly? It should hover in the atmosphere for weeks, months even … why else did it get so cold?”

  “I’d say everything is breaking the laws of physics—but I sense that would be untrue. Everything is expanding. Showing its deepest self.”

  They stared quietly at the sky. She reclined in the lawn chair, kicked her feet to the firepit, scraping the mud from the soles of her boots. “Where did everyone go? I don’t believe in Revelation, in rapture. People don’t just disappear.”

  “The white man’s bible is only one end-of-the-world myth.”

  She was silent for a moment, watching the fire as nearly all of humanity had watched before. “How have you done it? Reconciled your people’s beliefs with your scientific knowledge?”

  “There’s not really a chasm, they’re part of the same story.”

  “Max Planck said science can’t solve nature’s final mystery, since we’re a part of that mystery, in the end.”

  “Our ancestors tracked these stars, all the celestial bodies, from these lands.”

  She thought back to her first astronomy lesson, atop the mesa. “Bisabuela took me to Chaco Canyon and showed me the sun dagger. Without meaning to, she got me started on the path toward anthropology, toward science and evolution. No one knew what made the ancestors leave. They built these elaborate buildings in the middle of nowhere and then abandoned them. I had to understand why.”

  “We don’t believe they ever left. Their spirits still inhabit the places they created.”

  “Bisabuela said that.”

  “She’s a wise woman.”

  “Chance, how could she be here? And the Suuke?”

  “Do you want parable or myth?”

  “I want the truth.”

  “Then parable.”

  Calliope laughed, exasperated. “How is that truth?”

  “Listen … didn’t your bisabuela tell you your origin story?”

  She nodded, recited the story she’d learned as a child. “In Shipapu, the first two girls were born. The spirit Tsichtinako spoke to them, fed them, but wouldn’t show itself to them. They lived in the dark a long time. Then they were given baskets of seeds, which they planted, and the fastest-­growing tree broke into light. The sisters followed the light, climbed above, greeted the four directions and the sun.” She sang, quietly, “Already a long time ago from the underworld, southward they came with cloud, with fog, carrying useful things,” then stopped singing, whispered, “and their eyes hurt in the new light.”

  She was shaking with cold. Cupped her hands toward the fire.

  “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “Are you saying we’re in a myth? The myths are real ?”

  “No.” He prodded the fire with his boot. Sparks rose. “I’m saying they’re not myths.”

  A swilling in her gut. She scanned his face for a hint of a smile, the trickster she worried he might turn out to be. He was holding her gaze, stony and sober. She shivered. Her voice small, she asked, “Will we find them? My family …”

  He sighed. “I don’t think they’re dead if that’s what you’re asking.”

  She nodded, for that was exactly what she was asking.

  “I’ll help you look for them. I promised you that already.”

  Because tears were stinging her eyes and she didn’t want to cry in front of him again, she stood, wrapped her arms around her chest, took a deep breath. “I’m assuming we’re not leaving until sunrise? Whenever that is.”

  “It’s not safe otherwise.”

  “Then I’m going back to sleep. These babies sap my energy.” She walked toward the tent, paused, turned to Chance, who had already settled back into the lawn chair, his rifle still slung over his shoulder. He was looking up at the stars. “Shouldn’t you get some sleep?”

  “Me? Nah. I’m fine. I slept in Tejas.” He winked, and she laughed. “I’ll keep watch.”

  She stepped into the tent, not asking what he’d keep watching for.

  FIFTEEN

  SILVER CITY

  Bombs flying overhead. Cylinders popping. Propellers whirring. Calliope awoke to cacophony as alarm, Chance yelling in a language she didn’t understand. Chance yelling anything wasn’t a good sign. Eunjoo was sitting upright in bed, eyes wide with fear. Amy’s bag was empty. Her boots and clothes were gone. Calliope knew better this time than to leave Eunjoo alone. She reached for Susana’s gun that she’d left beside her sleeping bag on the ground, but it was gone. She pulled on the hiking boots then scooped up the girl and hurried to the zippered mouth of the tent. Chance was waving his arms in the air, calling out. In the sky toward the southeast, flying away from their destination, a yellow-and-white stripe moving away from them. Calliope couldn’t see the writing, but she didn’t need to; she knew it said Vixen. “Mentirosa!” Calliope yelled. “That lying snake. I knew it wasn’t out of gas!”

  “Where’s she going?” Eunjoo asked.

  “Cruces,” Calliope spat, unable to take the bitterness from her voice. To Chance she demanded, “Did she say anything?”

  His expression sheepish, he said, “I dozed, didn’t realize she was splitting until takeoff.”

  If there was a deus ex machina in this apocalypse, it needed to come now.

  Calliope felt betrayed. But why? She hadn’t known Amy. They weren’t friends. Naturally, she would’ve put her family above Calliope’s. Why shouldn’t she have? Every woman for herself.

  Still. Calliope felt deflated—heavy with rocks.

  After several minutes of cursing Amy in Spanish and pacing the campsite, wringing her cold hands, Calliope finally took a deep breath, turned to Chance and said, “What happened to the cars? The campers’ cars. They wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere without some way of getting here.”

  Worry lines formed across his forehead. “I didn’t want to scare you, but come over here. I have to show you something.”

  Holding Eunjoo’s hand, Calliope followed him past the yellow grass, past the empty visitor ce
nter, past a dirt road, to a small lake.

  It wasn’t much of a lake. More of a pond, really. Sludged with blackish water. Protruding from the center like a bulging belly or makeshift island, the round red hood of a car.

  “Are the campers inside?” she asked, horrified at the thought she’d brought Eunjoo to a slaughter scene, picturing a whole family submerged and pickling in the oily water.

  He raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath but didn’t answer her.

  “How long have you known this was here?” she asked.

  “Since yesterday, when I climbed that rock to assess our bearings.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I told you. Didn’t want to scare you.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Not like we can call the police.”

  “But shouldn’t we check? See if anyone’s inside?” Calliope resisted the urge to cover Eunjoo’s ears with her palms. She’d already heard their conversation, witnessed the drowned car. The damage already done, Calliope couldn’t keep shielding the girl from this nightmare. Eunjoo was as entangled as the rest of them.

  Chance motioned Calliope and Eunjoo out of his way. He would wade into the oily mudpond. He took off his boots, then stripped down to his boxers.

  Around Chance’s neck, a turquoise stone on a silver chain. He must’ve worn it under his flannel; she hadn’t noticed it before.

  He slogged into the water, and Calliope debated telling him to forget it, the water was so disgustingly black. Nor was she prepared to see the camper family’s corpses—she’d envisioned them off hiking, although she and Eunjoo were wearing their clothes.

  But they needed to know. Had the campers driven into the pond trying to escape something? Like Suuke? It had rained, but enough to cover the car? There were no tracks in the dirt around the water. As usual, Calliope was at a loss for explanations, which would have exasperated her at the best of times. She had built her whole life around a need for answers.

  Chance jimmied open the driver’s-side door, took a deep breath, and ducked his head into the murkiness.

  Calliope waited on edge for Chance to resurface with a corpse, but he arose alone, spitting and wiping his eyes. “Empty.”

  She sighed, unsure if she was relieved or frustrated. Either way, they were stranded.

  Still, Chance kept his promise. He reclothed, drying off in the campers’ tent and filling backpacks with food and liquids, and they left midmorning. There was no way to tell time but by the sun. Amy had flown away at daybreak. Eunjoo, Chance, and Calliope walked in the opposite direction, following the map Calliope had taken from the plane the night before, thankful for one small fortune amidst the crisis Amy had left them in. A map was a light in darkness.

  Calliope expected to find cars beyond the curve of highway stretching away from the City of Rocks. She didn’t expect to find the highway like this—

  As she, Chance, and Eunjoo finally emerged from the scrub oak and brush and stepped onto the tarmac, the road unraveled onward, miles ahead, rutted with gnarled roots shooting through the broken slabs of asphalt and branching into the sky, pushing through cars, twisting through the metal. A forest had sprung up—when? Arizona ash, quaking aspen, bur oak piercing into the air, full-grown, covered in leaves. A highway sign slanted diagonally, away from a tree trunk growing from the place the sign had melded into black tar.

  “What the hell?” Chance wrenched open a car door partway unhinged to begin with. A stout gray-brown trunk and broad crown of serpentine branches mangled through the floorboard.

  The only scattered cars as far as Calliope could see were maimed by trees. Calliope asked the obvious. “How is there a forest growing out of this highway?” She looked at the map. “We’re on the 180, right?”

  Chance nodded.

  “There should not be a forest, not according to this. The closest forest should be in Mimbres Park.” She used her pinched finger and thumb as a ruler. “Fifty miles northeast.”

  Chance put his hands to his face, closed his eyes, breathed in, rubbing his hands as if clearing his eyes of what they were seeing, opened them and said, “I think we’d better keep walking. Find a usable car. Get you to your family.” He pulled her close, Eunjoo with her. “Then I need to get back to the rez.”

  “What’s on the rez?”

  “Answers.”

  They veered around the smashed-car trees and continued walking.

  For miles and miles, the road was a forest of accidents, the cars demolished from the sudden growth. She saw it. But she didn’t believe it.

  Chance kept looking toward the hills, the Gilas in the distance.

  “What are you looking for?” Calliope asked. “More Kachinas?”

  Chance laughed ironically, a note of bitterness. “Anglos call them Kachinas but that’s not a Zuni word. We call them ko’ko. The ko’ko are our ancestors.” He turned away from the hills, stopped for a moment and looked at Calliope. “But yes, I’m looking for more. I don’t know how many ko’ko are out there, if there are others, in matter form, you know, instead of spirit.”

  “There are two Suuke,” Eunjoo squeaked, walking steadily a few paces ahead.

  Chance chuckled, quizzically. “That’s right, little bird. How do you know the Zuni tale?”

  Eunjoo shrugged, still not looking back.

  To Calliope, Chance said, “It’s a tale meant to scare children. Boys who don’t help their fathers with the animals, or girls who don’t help their mothers with the babies. They could get carried off by the Suuke to Kothluwala’wa—the mesas where they were once exiled—and eaten. If they’ve come from the tale, there should be two Suuke, husband and wife.”

  Calliope’s face scrunched, her lips puckered as if he’d said something sour. “Come from the tale? Chance, we’re scientists. There has to be some logical explanation.” She clung to skepticism, couldn’t trust her experiential knowledge. Not when this experience didn’t make any sense.

  “Logical or no, I’ll keep you safe.”

  She bristled at his paternal tone, gripped the straps of her backpack tighter. Since she had no rebuttal about the Suuke, she muttered, “This map is old. Forest could’ve grown in the last ten years.”

  “And the cars?”

  “Abandoned. I don’t know. Maybe they closed this road off and we missed a sign. There are lots of ghost towns across the state. Industry shut down, the whole place shut down.”

  “Those cars back there weren’t that old.”

  She snapped, “You’re an expert on cars?” She was acting ridiculous, yes, but she was frustrated.

  Chance laughed easily this time, his eyes shining. “Nah,” he said, lugging Eunjoo over his shoulders, piggyback, her matchstick legs dangling to Chance’s chest, where the strap of his rifle slung across his flannel. He gripped her shoes. “I’m just an Indian interested in how things work. That’s what took me to the white man’s world, for academic training. But there’s lots I don’t know.” Eunjoo rested her head and hands atop his head.

  Calliope sighed. She was lashing out at the one person helping her. He wasn’t the enemy. She didn’t know who or what the enemy was, but she knew she needed to be kinder to Chance. Es una guía, the apparition of Bisabuela had said, a guide. Even if Bisabuela had been a figment of her exhausted mind, the message was germane. She should treat her guide with respect. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that … I just need a logical explanation, need this nightmare to make sense.”

  “Whatever answers I find from the Elders, mujer, I’ll share them with you. One thing I do know—better to accept a mystery than an explanation with no logic.”

  This time she didn’t bristle when he called her mujer. She knew he knew they were equals. She was beginning to like the apodo, the token of familiarity between them.

  They kept walking. Despite the pain in her pelvis
, the twins pressing into her bladder, Calliope’s face inched into a smile when she saw that the little girl was twirling Chance’s black hair around her bandaged finger, and he let her. He began a story, his voice a natural storyteller’s, deep and laced with sorrow. His accent, somewhere between Spanish and Pueblo, reminded Calliope of a steady drumbeat. He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if attentive to the space the shape of his words made in the air.

  “When my brother-in-law, Arlen, was a boy alone at his house one early fall night on the rez, his family had gone hunting and left him to guard the sheep. He was reheating stew and bread and heard, outside in the darkness, an eerie crying then rattling. He tried to ignore it and eat his supper, but the wailing then rattling grew louder until he could no longer take it. He grabbed his rifle and flashlight and went tramping through the brambles, past the sheep pens, past the alligator juniper, toward the arroyo, where he shone his light. Then he saw it: a bone sticking out of the muddy arroyo, about this long”—Chance let go Eunjoo’s shoes and held out his hands six inches apart—“The bone was seeping with blood, the arroyo gurgling around it. And the wailing was unbearable. He waded into the water, snatched the bone, cursed it, screamed at it, took it to the embankment, and snapped it in half on the ground with the butt of his rifle.” Chance indicated a stomping movement with his own cowboy boots on the cracked asphalt beneath them. “Then he went home and finished his supper. Next morning, his family returned and asked how he’d spent the night. He told them about the bone, how he broke it, destroyed it, and his father said it was a bad thing he’d done and he shouldn’t have touched it. They returned to the arroyo, which had dried up. The water seeped to nothing, the ground a sludge of mud. But worse for Arlen and his family, the broken bone had become a broken animal half-buried in the mire. Now his family would pass away.”