“You can say that again.”
“Do we have that much?”
“Barely. After that last tank of gas we have thirty-seven and a little change. No, wait. You used all the change to call that Richard guy. We have thirty-seven.”
“So we have enough.”
“Yeah, and when we get in we’ll be down to twelve dollars and a quarter of a tank of gas.”
“Good thing I know this is the place.”
“We still have to get home, you know.”
“Yeah. That’s true.” But the extra twenty-five dollars wouldn’t get us home.
By now we were up to the little kiosk, and Victor took all of our money out of his pocket and counted out the twenty-five dollars. You could tell it hurt him to do it. There was a nice friendly looking woman in a uniform waiting in the booth, and she took nearly the last of our money, even though I guess she didn’t know it was nearly the last, and she smiled at us.
She gave us a nice color brochure about the whole Grand Canyon, and a little park newspaper about the South Rim, and a printed receipt with tape on it to put on the inside of our windshield. She said it was good for a week.
Then we had to do a lot more driving to actually get from the entrance station to the South Rim, and I started to worry a little about gas.
“Thank you,” I said to Victor while we were driving.
“For what?”
“For bringing me here, and for spending almost your last twenty-five dollars so we could get in.”
See, I shouldn’t have said he took our money out of his pocket. It was really Victor’s money. Some of it he had at the start, and some of it he earned working for Eddie. I didn’t start out with anything, and I didn’t do any work along the way.
“Oh. That’s OK. I’m just not sure what we’re going to do now.”
“Me neither,” I said. “So that’s why I thought it was even more important to say thank you.”
• • •
I spent the whole rest of the day looking for the patio from my dream, and Victor spent the whole rest of the day trying to panhandle for gas money.
Well, Victor did two things, actually. He also hiked a little way down into the canyon to see if there was a sign like the one I thought I remembered. That’s the only part of the day that worked out. I didn’t do so good finding the patio, and he didn’t do so good panhandling gas money.
I couldn’t walk as far as a person would have to walk to check the whole South Rim. But there was a free shuttle bus. So I took it from one spot to another. And every time I got off, I’d walk right to the rim and just look out. And every time I looked out I made that noise, like when you pull in your breath because something literally takes your breath away. But there was no one standing near me to hear. I mean, there were always lots of tourists. But they kept to themselves and I don’t think they heard.
I knew when I looked into the canyon that I was right. This was the place. I could feel it. I could tell. But the rim part of it was all wrong.
There was this paved trail, called the Rim Trail, and it went all the way along the South Rim. So there was no big hotel with a big outdoor patio that went right up to the rim, because then it would interrupt the Rim Trail. It would get in the way.
I kept looking at the map in my little color brochure, and it seemed pretty clear that the Rim Trail went all the way from one end of the civilized part of the South Rim to the other. No breaks for patios.
But it was important, so I rode the shuttle bus to every single stop and looked for myself. But it was just like the map said.
The place in my dream didn’t exist. Not here, anyway.
By the time I got back to where Victor had parked the car, I was pretty tired, and also discouraged and sad. Victor was sitting on a bench near the visitor center with Jax. He didn’t look any better than I felt. I walked over and sat down near him, and Jax started kissing my hands. Like he thought he’d never see me again or something. Or maybe like he didn’t want me to be sad. But I was anyway.
Victor took out his digital camera and brought up a photo of the sign and showed it to me on the little screen.
I said, “Yup. That’s the sign all right.”
There were a few extra words about the rim in the sentence, but the drawing of the tired guy and the different languages and all were right on the money. First I was all excited, but then I didn’t know what else to say about that.
“How’d you do finding the patio?” Victor asked.
“I didn’t find it.”
We just sat quiet for a while. Then I said, “How’d you do?”
“Pretty bad. I only got six dollars.”
“Maybe it’s the economy,” I said. Because I hated to think that people wouldn’t be any more helpful than that. “Maybe they spent all their money on this vacation.”
“Right,” he said. Like he didn’t figure that was it.
“Maybe they didn’t know it costs twenty-five dollars to get in, either.”
“Maybe you need to do this,” he said. “Maybe people would give money to a sweet-looking girl who weighs about as much as a hummingbird. Maybe they don’t like to give money to a six-foot-five Goth guy with a ring in his nose and in his eyebrow. And with a big dog.”
“I would think Jax would be a plus,” I said.
“I think you need to try.”
“I’m not sure I could ask people for money.”
“Well, then I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“Are we just giving up and going home?”
“I have no idea, Vida. You tell me.”
He was really tired. I could tell. We both were. It was almost dark, too. It was almost Sunday night. I really thought by now I would have found what I was looking for. I hadn’t seen this part coming.
“I still think it’s the Grand Canyon. Maybe just some other part of the canyon.”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took out the brochure again. While I was unfolding it, I remembered how Eddie said there was a North Rim, too, and it was higher. “Maybe there are some more hotels on the North Rim.”
“Maybe,” he said.
But I looked at the brochure, and there was only one. The North Rim Lodge. Just that one. Other than that and a campground, there wasn’t much up there.
“There’s only one,” I said.
“We can try it if you want.”
I felt something squirrely and scared in my stomach, because I only had that one chance left, and if it wasn’t there, then I was wrong. Just plain wrong. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe that dream didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just a dream. Maybe my new heart didn’t remember anything. Maybe it was just my old brain playing tricks on me.
Maybe we should just give up and go home. Except I was right about the sign.
So I said, “I’ll look and see how far it is to drive there.” And I started digging around in the brochure, and in the newspaper. I found what I was looking for, too. It even had a little map. “Holy shit,” I said. Even though I don’t usually swear. I guess that’s twice, though.
“What?”
“It’s 220 miles. It takes five and a half hours to drive there.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s about ten miles rim to rim. Shortest distance as the crow flies. We could get there in just ten miles if we could fly.”
“But we can’t,” he said. “And we don’t have that much gas.”
We just sat like that for a long time. I was feeling the sense of something dark hanging on us. Like it was something I could pick up and put on a scale. If I had a scale. I bet it weighed a lot.
Then after a time, I said, “I guess I’ll have to try it. I’ll have to be able to bring myself to ask people for money.”
“Better hurry up,” he said. “It’s almost dark.”
“You and Jax go wait in the car, OK? I don’t want anybody watching this. This is weird enough as it is. OK?”
So they went back to the car and left me
alone.
I walked back out to the rim. It’s a little longer walk near the visitor center. The rim is not right there. You have to walk a ways. And I was getting pretty tired.
When I got to the rim, the canyon looked redder because the light was on a slant. So I sucked in my breath, even though I’d seen it ten times already today.
It really never looks exactly the same way twice.
I walked along the rim trail for a little while, and I saw lots and lots of people, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of them for money.
There were some boulders between the paved trail and the rim, and I sat down with my back against one and started to cry. It felt really good. Turned out I’d been holding it in all day. It was a relief to finally let it go. I didn’t have any tissues, though, so I had to keep wiping my nose on my sleeve, which I realize is really disgusting. But I don’t know what else I was supposed to do.
I saw and felt this sort of shadow, like someone was standing over me, and I looked up and saw this older lady squatting down close. She looked nice.
“You OK, honey?” she asked.
“Kind of sad,” I said.
“Yes, I can see that. What’s wrong?”
Now, would you please like to tell me how I was supposed to explain all of this to her?
“It’s really nice of you to ask,” I said. “But it’s complicated.”
“I’m not in a hurry.”
“Really complicated,” I said.
She sat down right near me and rummaged around in her big fabric bag and took out a little packet of tissues. And gave me three.
“That’s very nice,” I said. “Thank you.” And I blew my nose, and it was louder than I meant for it to be.
“Anything else I can do that would help?”
“Not unless you’re going to the North Rim and can give me a ride.”
“Sorry, no. I’m not. There’s a shuttle, though.”
“A free shuttle?”
“No. That one’s not free.”
“We have a car,” I said. “We just don’t have money for gas. Or for a shuttle. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. Because I probably wouldn’t find what I was looking for there, either. I was so sure it was here, and I was wrong. I’m probably just going to be wrong again. It’s probably just as well that we don’t have money for gas because it would probably just be a great big waste of a trip.”
Except the back of my head said, The sign. Don’t forget the sign. But I pushed it away again, because I was sad, and that’s what I wanted to be right then.
She didn’t say anything, so I looked up to see if she was still there. She was. She was digging around in her purse again. I blew my nose one more time, quieter this time, and wiped my eyes on a clean tissue.
“Go try,” she said. And closed my hand around some more tissues. “Go see.”
Then she got up and walked away.
I sat there for a long time, trying to pull myself together. Then I needed to blow my nose again, so I opened my hand. And I came really, really close to blowing my nose on a fifty-dollar bill. In with the two tissues, she’d left a fifty-dollar bill in my hand.
She was long gone, so I never got to say thank you.
On the Night Before We Drove to the North Rim
We decided not to go all the way to the North Rim till Monday morning. Till the next day. Victor was too tired to go 220 miles all in that same night. So we just drove a little way Sunday night, until we got to a place that was outside the park and we could pull the car over and sleep in it, and maybe if we were lucky nobody would notice.
“What if it’s another twenty-five dollars to get into the North Rim?” Victor asked, while we were lying there trying to get to sleep.
“See what the receipt says.”
So he sat up and turned on the overhead light, and it was really glary, because it didn’t have one of those plastic covers to go over it. It was just a bare bulb. So I put one hand over my eyes.
Jax looked up to see what was going on, but he couldn’t get up to see, because I was lying on him. “Oh,” Victor said. “Good. This receipt says it’s good for both rims.”
“Well, there you go, then.”
That was two good breaks in one day. You have to at least be grateful for that.
It took me hours and hours, but I finally got to sleep. And I had that dream again. Just like before. Or almost just like before.
Only in this dream, Richard wasn’t young. He was just the regular age that he is now.
And, also, this time just as I was about to go talk to him I woke myself up. I’m not sure why. I just know Jax didn’t have anything to do with it at all.
CHAPTER 10: RICHARD
What Life Is, Ultimately
On Monday morning, my back stiff and with a maddening crick in my neck, I got a coffee to go from the deli and found a seat.
Yes, on the sun porch. I just did.
Oddly, it didn’t hurt. Somehow my emotional vulnerability of the night before had given way to numbness. Sheer numbness. So I did it simply by putting one foot in front of the other and doing it.
I even took one of the double chairs.
As far as I could tell by feel, it meant little. If anything at all.
The canyon hadn’t changed, of course. Canyons never do. At least, not in nine years. Not in a human lifetime. But it looked different to me, so I knew I had changed. The red of the rock looked less vibrant, the striations of color less distinct. The way it had taken my breath away when I was a younger man seemed a distant memory at best.
I stayed there all morning. In the sun. After a time I began to feel my skin getting too toasty, so I left my outer shirt on the chair — so I wouldn’t return to find all the chairs taken, or even all the chairs closest to the rim — and bought a cheap hat and a tube of sunscreen from the gift shop.
Then I sat there all afternoon.
Hard to imagine I could sit there all those hours without getting bored. Even harder to imagine that I cannot, after the fact, quantify what I was thinking. I’m pretty sure I was not thinking. I’m pretty sure I just sat and stared.
Storm clouds gathered in the afternoon, as storm clouds so often do in the mountains. It felt good to get a break from the sun. Then the clouds let go, and rain splattered the sun porch, and happy couples ran screaming and laughing into the covered, windowed open lobby just to our right.
I stayed.
The rain soaked me through, but I wasn’t cold, so I didn’t care. I don’t know why I didn’t care. Normally I would have. But this time I didn’t. I just sat. I sat and felt rain soak through the open straw weave of my new hat, and soak my hair and run down my face. I watched it splatter loudly in puddles on the stone all around me, each drop hammering back up into the air like machine-gun fire. I watched webs of lightning crackle in the dark air, framed by their black-cloud background, touching down on the rim forty or fifty miles to the east.
Then, just as quickly as it had come, it blew through again.
First the clouds parted enough to show two or three patches of blue sky. Then it rained a little more but with the sun beating down, lighting up the drops of rain in that odd phenomenon of the sun shower. I hadn’t seen one in as long as I could remember. Then it blew away entirely, and people began to reemerge. To tip the water off chairs and look around for something to use to dry them off.
I looked at my watch. It was nearly six. The day was almost gone. I hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t even felt the empty crampiness of my stomach, though I felt it at that moment. In fact, my numbness dropped away entirely.
Vida hadn’t come. I must have missed her. Either that, or she didn’t know her way back here after all. I sat a while longer, wondering which explanation I preferred. But it was an unanswerable question. Two equally dismal options.
I folded my arms on the low stone wall and leaned forward, resting my head in that dark safety. I’m not sure how long I remained in that position before I felt a gentle hand on my back.
&
nbsp; I jumped, and looked up. Expecting to see Vida. It was not Vida.
I looked up into the unusually blue eyes of an older woman. A stranger. She wore her gray hair stylishly short. Her silver earrings dangled nearly to her shoulders. I took her to be about seventy.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “Maybe it’s none of my business. But I felt I had to ask if you were OK.”
I sat up straighter. Drew in a breath. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt a tightening in my throat and a burning behind my eyes. But I didn’t let it get any farther than that.
“Thank you,” I said. Careful to keep my lip from quivering. Suddenly I understood that old expression about the stiff upper lip. Although it was my lower lip that seemed to need the most supervision. Still, you have to be careful at a time like that. “That’s very nice of you to ask. I’m … Well, I’m not, really. I’m not OK. But I don’t really have a problem that anyone can help me with. But thank you, anyway, for asking. I’m just going through a time in my life that’s very … confusing.”
She sat beside me in the double chair, her eyes soft. One hand on my shoulder. “You’re sure there’s nothing you need?”
“Food, actually,” I said. “I haven’t eaten all day. I think I should just get myself up and go over to the deli and get a sandwich or something. Maybe I can just leave my outer shirt here, and maybe my hat on the chair, and then nobody will take my seat. If I ate something maybe I’d be a little more able to cope.”
“I hope so,” she said, and rose, touching my shoulder one last time. “Be well.”
I watched her walk away.
• • •
While waiting inside for my sandwich to be made, my cell phone rang.
I pulled it out of my pocket, suddenly aware that I had let it get drenched. I was lucky it even still worked.
I opened it, and said hello.
“Mr. Bailey?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” said a young voice. “We just had a couple check out three days early. The altitude was getting to the wife. Still looking for a cabin?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“How many nights do you want it for? All three?”
Second Hand Heart Page 22
