Canyon Sacrifice

by Graham, Scott

  “No te preocupes, esposa mia,” Chuck told her. He liked using bits of Spanish with her, just as she did with the girls. In this case, the word esposa didn’t feel as odd coming off his tongue as the word wife had with Donald earlier in the day.

  Carmelita returned to camp, her eyes alight at her accomplishment. Janelle hugged her oldest daughter to her before leading both girls off to bed. Carmelita and Rosie were asleep in the camper by the time their uncle drove up half an hour later.

  Clarence emerged from his dented hatchback with a bottle of tequila in hand. “Time to celebrate,” he announced, coming around his car. He hitched up his baggy jeans and waved the bottle so the golden liquid glinted in the firelight. “Whew, that’s a long drive.”

  “You oughtta be good at it by now,” Chuck said.

  Every weekend throughout the transmission-line contract, Clarence had driven at least as far as Gallup, if not all the way home to Albuquerque.

  “Four weeks off makes a big difference,” he replied.

  Clarence was stocky and broad-chested like his father and Rosie. He shared their throaty tone of voice as well. His large set of white teeth gleamed when he laughed, which was often. His ruddy face and round cheeks reminded Chuck of Santa Claus—if, that is, Santa sported raven-black hair to his shoulders, wore a thick silver stud in each ear, and had a thing for Navajo girls and mezcal tequila.

  Janelle rose from her seat beside the fire to hug her brother.

  “Lemme at you, Sis,” Clarence said, wrapping her in his arms. Then he reached out to fist-bump Chuck. “Jefe.”

  “Something to eat?” Chuck asked.

  Over the course of their two years of fieldwork, Chuck and Clarence had spent most weeknights in motel rooms in whatever nondescript reservation town was nearest the section of right-of-way they were working. They’d slept out, Chuck in the enclosed bed of his pickup truck and Clarence in the rear of his hatchback, when the windswept towns that passed for civilization on the rez were a long drive away.

  “I grabbed a burger in Gallup,” Clarence said. He gave the nearly full bottle a shake. “This is what I’ve been looking forward to, and you guys have to join me.”

  “One shot, that’s all,” said Janelle as she sat back down. “I’m half asleep as it is.”

  “It’s a celebration, is what I’m saying. My sister, my boss, happily married. Who’d’ve ever thought?”

  He returned to his hatchback and dug around inside until he came up with three shot glasses. He lined them on the roof of the car, filled each in turn, and carried them to the fire.

  “The two of you took off for Durango and never gave me a chance to say this,” he told Janelle and Chuck, handing out the shots and raising his glass. “Here’s to both of you. Three weeks in, and may it be three centuries.”

  “Centuries?” Janelle fluttered her eyes at Chuck over the top of her glass. “I’m not sure he’d want me three hundred years from now.”

  “Yes, I would,” Chuck said. “Three hundred. Three thousand. Three million.”

  Her eyes glittered in the firelight. He shivered with pleasure as their glasses clinked. He downed his shot, gasping as the alcohol burned its way to his stomach. He set his glass on the picnic table and tossed another chunk of wood on the fire, sending a shower of sparks into the night air. The three of them settled back in their chairs around the flickering flames.

  “How’re things at home?” Janelle asked her brother, as if her daily calls to her mother and father didn’t keep her fully up to date.

  Clarence, who lived in an apartment above the garage behind his parents’ house, offered news Janelle probably knew: the latest plan to drive Albuquerque’s drug gangs from the city, a neighbor recently diagnosed with cancer, another who’d won a thousand bucks in the lottery.

  It wasn’t long before Chuck’s eyelids began to droop. A glance at Janelle showed she was fading as well. It had been a full couple of days. A full three weeks, for that matter.

  “Bedtime,” Chuck said, standing up. “Come on.” He pulled Janelle up beside him.

  “’Night,” Janelle said to Clarence as Chuck led her to the camper.

  “’Night, Sis,” Clarence replied, remaining by the fire.

  Chuck handed Janelle the flashlight and held the screen door open for her. He turned to Clarence. “All set?”

  Clarence indicated his hatchback. “Bed’s already made.”

  Chuck cradled Janelle in his arms as they fell asleep on the platform opposite the girls in the camper. He slept late the next morning. Like Janelle, he’d had only the one shot of tequila, but the pleasant evening must have had a calming effect on both of them because it was past eight when he slipped outside, leaving Janelle breathing evenly behind him, her head buried in her pillow.

  The day was sunny and already warm. He rotated his upper body in a few leisurely stretches, finding that he had little desire to take off on his morning run. Instead, he fired up the camp stove. He finished making coffee just as Janelle joined him at the picnic table in low-cut jeans and a sleeveless top. He poured her a cup while she yawned and kneaded the back of her neck.

  “Where’s Carmelita?” she asked sleepily, taking her mug from Chuck.

  “Inside.” Chuck poured his own cup and pointed at the camper. “Isn’t she?”

  Janelle shook her head.

  “I’ve been up a while,” Chuck said with a frown. “Fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  Janelle looked around the quiet campsite. She set her mug on the picnic table and ducked inside the camper only to reemerge seconds later. “Rosie’s there, that’s all,” she said, her voice strained.

  She circled the camper, checking the windows of her mini-SUV and Clarence’s hatchback and looking all directions. Chuck followed, coffee cup in hand. She set off toward the nearest bathroom, the one Carmelita had visited on her own the night before. Chuck set his mug on the table and jogged to catch up.

  Janelle turned to him. “No. You stay here.”

  She walked a few more paces, then broke into a run.

  Back at camp, Chuck peered into Clarence’s car. Clarence lay diagonally across the folded rear hatch area in his sleeping bag, his eyes closed, the bottle of tequila, half-empty, tucked beside him. Chuck double-checked Janelle’s car next, convinced she’d overlooked Carmelita curled up inside reading a book. But both the front and rear seats were empty. He turned a full circle. Where was she?

  The campground was full of noise and motion, campers cooking, washing dishes, collapsing tents, and walking to and from the bathrooms, unaware of the frigid rush of fear now coursing through Chuck’s veins.

  Janelle emerged alone from the women’s bathroom. She took a couple of steps in the direction of camp, then turned and disappeared inside the men’s half of the building. She came out seconds later, still alone, and ran toward camp.

  “Carm!” she called. “Carmelita!” she yelled again, drawing stares from neighboring campers.

  Chuck met her at the edge of the campsite. “She’s gone, Chuck,” Janelle said, her voice shaking, her eyes filled with alarm. “Carm’s gone.”

  THURSDAY

  “A descent into the Cañon is essential for a proper estimate of its details, and one can never realize the enormity of certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect at their base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky.”

  — John Stoddard

  John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, Vol. 10, 1898

  EIGHT

  8:30 a.m.

  Fire blazed suddenly in Janelle’s eyes. She slapped Chuck hard on the side of his face. The pop of her palm echoed across the campground. Chuck stumbled backward, putting a hand to his stinging cheek.

  “You let her go last night,” Janelle snapped. “‘You’re a big girl,’ you told her. Well, she isn’t, Chuck. She isn’t!”

  The flames receded from Jan’s eyes as quickly as they had come. She collapsed against Chuck’s chest. Before he could put his arms around her, she shoved herself a
way from him.

  “Where is she, Chuck? Where is Carmelita?”

  Chuck’s eyes darted around the campground, searching for a glimpse of Carmelita’s wispy frame. Janelle needed strength. Encouragement. She needed a good cop, a proclaimer of positive thoughts.

  “She’s around here somewhere,” he said. “She’s gotta be. Where could she possibly have gotten off to?”

  “Farther today than she ever would have yesterday, no thanks to you.”

  “Which is why she’s somewhere nearby, just out of sight,” Chuck countered. But Carmelita, proud though she’d been of her solo trip to the bathroom, never would have awoken this morning and purposefully set off somewhere out of sight of camp. Doing so simply didn’t fit her cautious nature. Might she inadvertently have wandered somewhere beyond their view? That, at least, was a possibility worth investigating.

  “Expanding circles,” Chuck said, naming a basic archaeological work method. He pointed in the direction opposite the campsite of the woman from Albuquerque. “You loop that way. I’ll swing the other. We’ll meet back here in a few minutes.”

  Chuck went just far enough on his loop through the campground to catch sight of the Albuquerque woman’s campsite. It was empty, the tent and large black SUV gone. He returned from his unsuccessful search to find Janelle pounding on her brother’s hatchback. Clarence’s haggard face appeared in the car’s sloping rear window. He pulled on his pants, crawled out, and stood unsteadily, rubbing his eyes.

  “Have you seen Carm?” Janelle demanded.

  “What?”

  “Have—you—seen—Carm? Since last night?”

  “Um, sorry, Sis. No.” Clarence looked to Chuck for help. “What’s going on?”

  “Carm’s wandered off somewhere,” Chuck told him.

  Clarence’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s not like her.”

  Janelle took hold of his shoulder. “Which is why I’m trying to get your attention.”

  “You checked your car?” Clarence asked.

  She dropped her hand and nodded.

  “What’s missing of her stuff?” Clarence asked her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what’d she take with her? What’s she wearing?”

  Chuck looked at his assistant, impressed. Clarence had nailed the first two rules of site study.

  The first: Don’t just do something, stand there. That is, think things through. Ask questions. Get answers. Don’t begin the initial survey of an archaeological site, much less digging, without a plan.

  And the second: Begin at the very beginning, that’s a very good place to start. Complete the full site assessment first, set up grid units based on the best sense of what’s underfoot, then excavate each unit in turn, beginning with the one that holds the most promise and working outward from there.

  Chuck led the way to the camper. The air inside was stale and musty. The lighting was dim, diffused by the camper’s canvas walls. Clothes, toys, and sleeping bags were strewn across the sleeping platforms, while sneakers, sandals, and boots were scattered on the floor—a compact version of the upheaval that had come to Chuck’s small house in Durango when Janelle and the girls arrived three weeks ago.

  Chuck turned a half-circle, uncertain where to begin. Janelle stepped past him and kicked at the shoes on the floor.

  “She’s wearing her hiking boots,” she said. “The new ones.”

  She slid Rosie, still asleep in her bag, to the rear of the girls’ sleeping platform and clawed through clothes, dolls, stuffed animals, electronic toys, and children’s books. She came up with the red shorts and blouse Carmelita had worn the day before. She lifted Carmelita’s silky yellow pajamas from the jumble of clothing and toys and held them to her chest, her eyes closed.

  “She’s wearing her sweats, the ones she had on last night,” Janelle said, turning to Chuck and Clarence. “Her favorites.”

  Clarence stepped to the edge of the girls’ sleeping platform. “With the stripes? The blue ones?”

  “She slept in them. She and Rosie were tired, didn’t want to change.”

  “There’s a jacket and pants, right?” Clarence pushed Carmelita’s empty sleeping bag aside. He and Janelle began rummaging through everything on the platform.

  “What’s this?” Janelle asked, dropping the pajamas and picking up a piece of white paper previously hidden by Carmelita’s sleeping bag.

  She squinted at the sheet of paper in the dim light. Her hand and the paper shook. Two words were penned on it in large, plain block letters: “NO COPS.”

  Clarence snatched the paper from Janelle’s hand and flipped it over. Other than the two large words, it was blank. The three of them stood around the piece of paper in stunned silence.

  Rosie chose that moment to poke her head from her sleeping bag. “Uncle Clarence!” She kicked her way out of her bag and leapt into Clarence’s arms.

  Clarence handed the sheet back to Janelle and clasped Rosie to him. Looking over her shoulder at Janelle and Chuck, he unleashed a string of Spanish curses.

  Rosie leaned away from him. “What did you say?”

  “Nada, bambina.” He put a finger to her lips. “Nada importante.”

  Chuck took another look at the paper in Janelle’s hand. It had to be some sort of prop made by Carmelita while the girls played in the camper yesterday afternoon. But a glance at Clarence told him otherwise. Clarence’s face was drained of color, his eyes haunted.

  Chuck turned to Janelle—the look in her eyes matched her brother’s. Janelle knew what Clarence knew. Her eyes told Chuck something else as well: Carmelita had been kidnapped.

  A hole opened inside him, black and bottomless. Carmelita. Kidnapped.

  Janelle dropped the sheet of paper to the girls’ sleeping platform, put a fist to her mouth, and ducked outside. Chuck and Clarence, carrying Rosie, followed. Janelle bent double at the side of the camper and vomited, her hands on her knees. Chuck rested a hand on her back, his own stomach churning.

  “What’s wrong, Mamá?” Rosie asked.

  Janelle straightened and swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at Clarence, who looked straight back at her. Only then did she turn to Chuck, her eyes steely with determination.

  “Tag,” she said grimly. “You’re it.”

  Chuck stared at her, bewildered.

  “Miguel,” Clarence said, his voice hard.

  Janelle kept her eyes trained on Chuck.

  “Miguel,” she repeated.

  NINE

  9 a.m.

  Chuck waved his hands in front of him and took a step backward. “Wait a minute. Wait just one minute.”

  Janelle had told Chuck little about Miguel Gutierrez, the father of Carmelita and Rosie. Chuck knew only that Miguel was a small-time drug dealer a few years older than Janelle, that he’d hooked up with her while she was a community college student, that the two had never married, and that Miguel had disappeared from the lives of Janelle and the girls shortly after Rosie’s birth five years ago.

  “What is it the two of you know that I don’t?” Chuck demanded. Rosie’s eyes darted from her mother to her uncle and back. Chuck reached over to rub her shoulder, but she ducked away from him and buried her face in Clarence’s neck. Hurt, Chuck turned to Janelle. “Talk to me,” he said, his words clipped.

  “He always made threats,” Janelle said. “From the very first. ‘I’ll kill you if you leave.’ Then, after Carm was born, ‘You leave me, you’ll never see your little girl again.’ I was so scared. Of course I never left. How could I?” She looked plaintively at Chuck. “It was Miguel, finally, who left us. He swore Rosie wasn’t his. He was broke all the time. People were after him.” She paused. “It was so good when he was gone. Mami and Papi were, like, the best. These last five years, I’ve finally gotten to know what it’s like to be alive.” Her voice cracked. “And then you . . .” She raised a hand toward Chuck’s face, but he backed away from her.

  “How long’s it been since you’ve s
een him?” he demanded.

  “The day Rosie was born.” Janelle lowered her hand, her face pale.

  “You haven’t seen him,” Chuck urged.

  “He calls. Out of the blue. Usually when he’s wasted.”

  “Any more threats?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, her eyes downcast.

  “When was the last one?”

  “A few weeks ago.” Her voice was barely audible.

  “What’d he say?”

  Rosie reached from Clarence’s arms for her mother. Janelle traded Clarence the sheet of paper for Rosie and balanced her youngest daughter on her hip. “Preciosa mia,” she whispered in Rosie’s ear, tears streaming down her face.

  “Preciosa mia tambien, Mamá,” Rosie replied mechanically, wiping away her mother’s tears with the flat of her hand.

  Chuck asked Janelle, “You were with him for what, four years?”

  “Three. Just three.”

  “You had one baby with him, then you went ahead and had another.”

  “I was different back then. A different person. I blamed Mami and Papi, but it wasn’t their fault. They worked so hard. But they were all over me, like every minute. I needed space, my own life.”

  “And this Miguel,” Chuck muttered, “he gave you that.”

  “I was nineteen and pregnant by a drug dealer,” Janelle said. “And I was so sure I knew what I was doing.”

  “So you just kept doing it,” Chuck said, stone-faced.

  “I’d been so sheltered.” She glanced at Clarence. “We’d been so sheltered. I quit college. I’d only been going part time anyway. I was going to make my own way in the world. At least, that’s the way I thought of it. But I knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t.”