We were alone, alone completely, much more alone than we sometimes felt we were at night when the lights got turned off and the door got shut. I started to have thoughts of many bad things with each step we took. And later, I thought nothing but looked around us for wild beasts, thinking if the beasts found us, they would notice we were lost and attack us. Nothing around us looked familiar, and when you asked the name of that tree, that bird, that kind of cloud, I just said, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
Once, when we were still all in the car together, we had said yes when Ma said if you ever get lost, can you promise me you will know how to find us again? I promised, yes, Mama, of course. But I never really thought after that question how I would keep that promise—not until now. And I kept on thinking as we walked maybe back to them, maybe farther away from them, how will I keep my promise and how will we find them again? But it was impossible to concentrate on this problem because our boots on the gravel along the dry cowpath beside the creek made a sound like teeth grinding cereal, which was distracting and also made me hungry. The sun was hitting us in the forehead now through the short trees, and the white wind blowing brought so many worldsounds, it made us scared. Sounds like a thousand toothpicks falling on the ground, sounds like old ladies scratching in their handbags for things they never find, sounds like someone hissing at us from under a bed. Black birds were making triangles and then lines and then again triangles above us in the sky and I thought maybe they were trying to make arrows and pointing us someplace, but no, who could ever trust birds? Only eagles were to be trusted. Next to a big rock, I decided we should stop and rest a little.
ALLEGORY
If I concentrated, I could picture all of it in my head, Echo Canyon, a large shimmering plain on a hill, and there, our parents waiting for us, probably angry but also happy to see us again. But all I could see in the very far distance were many hills and the up and the down of the path, and beyond it, the high mountains above the gray haze. Behind me always was the sound of your little steps grinding the gravel and also your moaning, your worrying, your thirst and hunger. When night began to fall and I was feeling worried, I remembered that story about the Siberian girl and her dog, which had kept her safe and then rescued her. I told you I wished we had a dog. And you said, yuck, no. And then after a little silence, you said, well, maybe yes.
Once, still with Pa and Ma, we’d walked into a secondhand store, which is something Ma loves to do even if she never buys anything, and we’d seen an old dog dozing, looking like a cozy rug spread out on the floor. We’d gone to pet it while Papa looked at things and Ma talked to the shop owner, which she also loves to do in small shops. And I petted the dog and talked to it and you started asking the dog really funny questions, like, would you rather be taller, would you rather be orange, would you want to be a giraffe instead of a dog, would you love to eat leaves, would you rather live out in the wild like next to the river? And I could swear under oath that every time you asked a question like that, the dog nodded, saying yes, saying yes, yes to every question. So when we were in the river walking on those slippery green rocks, I thought of the dog and thought that if it was here with us, we might not be scared ever at all. Even when the night fell later, it would be okay because we’d have the dog to cuddle with, and you would curl up under its leg and I would spoon it on the other side only keeping my mouth shut to not get hairs on my tongue, which would make me gag. And if at night we heard other dogs barking in faraway ranches in the valley, or if we thought we heard wolves howl up in the mountains, or sidewinder snakes slithering on the ground toward us, we would not be frightened, would not have to crawl under fences or hold rocks in our hands while we slept.
I took out my Continental Divide Trail map to study it once more and memorize the route. We had to reach a place called Jim Courten Ranch, then go past the Willow Tank, and the Still Tank, and then the Big Tank, and I knew we would find water in the tanks, so I wasn’t worried. After the last tank, it was not a long walk to the first real town, which was Lordsburg, and we’d have to pass the Davis Windmill and then the Myers Windmill, and as long as we passed those windmills, I’d know we hadn’t lost our way completely. Once we passed the last windmill, there would be a cemetery, and then finally Lordsburg. There we would find a train station and jump on a train, although this part I didn’t have so well planned out yet. I was trying to explain all this to you, and you just nodded and said okay, and then you asked if I could read a little bit to you while there was still some light and promised not to fall asleep and to keep me company. So I opened my backpack to get Ma’s red book, shook it inside the backpack so that the pictures would slide out, and then took it out to read this to you:
(THE SEVENTH ELEGY)
The mountain train came to a final halt in a large open yard surrounded by smoldering factory sites, half-abandoned, and empty storage bodegas. There was no one and nothing inside the buildings around the yard, except for a few owls and cats and families of rats scavenging for scraps of earlier days. The children were told to get off. They’d have to wait there for the next train to pass, the man in charge said. Two, maybe three nights, maybe four. He knew, but did not tell them, this was halfway, they had made it halfway already. Had they known, they would have felt some relief, perhaps. The only thing the man in charge did tell them was that what would follow was the desert, and that the next train would not stop, would only slow down a little to change tracks, so while they waited, they’d practice train-jumping, memorize instructions, learn to jump aboard a moving train, unless they wanted to be crushed under its wheels.
During the days that they waited, whenever the man in charge was gone or was asleep, one of the boys took out a map he had been given earlier along the route. He’d unfold it, spread it out on the gravel, and another boy would light it, striking matches. The other children sat around it like it was a bonfire. They studied it, smiled at sonorous names, halted before names unlikely, repeated names strange or beautiful, and finally a foreign name, right on the other side of the thick red line. Pressing his index finger against the crumpled piece of paper, the boy drew a line from that name into the desert plains and valleys between two mountains, a line that ended in a town, another strange name. The boy said:
Here. Here is where we walk to, and here is where we jump on the next train.
And then? another boy asked.
What next? asked a girl.
Then we’ll see what happens next.
The night sky above the train yard, quiet and black, could be overlaid with many thoughts: thoughts of before and especially thoughts of the future beyond. Looking up into the dark, one of the littler ones, the fourth boy, whispered this question into the eldest one’s ear:
How do you imagine it, across the desert, after we cross it, the big city I’m going to?
The older one thought for a second and told him there would be one long iron bridge hanging over blue waters that were still and smooth. He would not cross this river in floaters, not cross this bridge aboard train tops, but in a good car. All around him would be beautiful cars, all of them new, each moving slowly and in an orderly way across this bridge. There would be great buildings made of glass rising up to meet him.
When the older boy paused for breath, the little one asked:
And then?
And then he tried to imagine further, but he could not picture anything and could only think back to the putrid jungle, aboard the blue roof of the old gondola, his thoughts like an ocean receding, accumulating destruction and fear in a great wave. In his mind, the impeccable future, the summoned waters, smooth and still, flooded suddenly with the brown wave of earlier rivers, and is covered with the debris of creepers and vines crawling under dark tunnels, like the ones carved into the high mountains he saw from the roof of the brick-red gondola.
He made an effort to retain the thought of glass buildings and gleaming cars but saw only ruins, imagined only the liquid sound of millions of hearts pumping blood into vei
ns, pumping hearts of wild men and women, all throbbing at the same time under city ruins. He could almost hear them, a dozen million hearts pulsing, pumping, palpitating in that future city in some ways identical to the dark jungle they had left behind. He raised his hands to his head and placed his index and middle fingers on his temples, locating the beat of his heart thrusting blood there, feeling the waves of thoughts relentless, and the fears forming slowly there, crashing against some deeper unknown place.
POINT OF VIEW
By the time I had finished reading, you were asleep and I was a little scared to fall asleep, and I remembered those lines we used to repeat in the car, “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him,” and for the first time I understood exactly what the author had meant when he wrote them.
I also felt that we were getting closer and closer to the lost children. It was as if while I listened to their story and their plans, they also listened to ours. I decided to read aloud just one more chapter, which was very short, even if you were already asleep.
(THE EIGHTH ELEGY)
The boys relieved their bladders together, making a circle around a dead bush near the tracks in the train yard. Before they had come to the train yard, it was a difficult task, and now they had almost forgotten how simple it was. Aboard the trains, in the early mornings, the boys were allowed to relieve their bladders only once. They stood by the edge of the gondola’s rooftop, in pairs or alone. They saw the yellow arch of urine first jetting forward, then spraying sideways, broken into countless little drops. The girls had to climb down the side ladder, jump onto the small platform between cars, and, holding on to bars, squat into the emptiness, spraying or soiling the gravel beneath them. They closed their eyes, trying to not see the moving ground. Sometimes they looked up and saw the man in charge looking down at them, grinning under his blue cap. They looked past him, and sometimes they saw high eagles crossing the bluer sky above, and if the eagles did pass, the girls knew they were being watched over and were safe.
SYNTAX
I realized I also had to pee. I used to pee only in toilets, but I had learned to do it in the open, just like the lost boys did from the top of the gondola. And now I think I could only ever pee in the open. I learned to do it one day when we were outside the Apache cemetery. You all got in the car to wait for me and I asked you to look the other way and Ma and Pa did, but you, Memphis, you covered your face with your hands but didn’t really cover your eyes. I knew you were peeking and would look at my butt and think that my tooshie was ugly, and maybe laugh at me, but I couldn’t have cared less because anyway you always used to see my butt when we’d shower together, and you’d even see my penis, which you called yo-yo, so sometimes I call it yo-yo, too, but only in the shower, because it’s the only place I’m not shy about words like that, ’cause there we’re alone together.
That time in the cemetery, I peed so strong, I was bursting. And it was so much pee coming out of me that I wrote my new initials on the dust: S for Swift and then F for Feather, and then I even underlined them both.
When I was pulling up my pants, I remembered a joke or a saying Pa had told us where someone says, you can piss on my face, just don’t tell me it’s raining, and I was going to laugh or at least smile, but then I also remembered that Geronimo was buried there beyond the wall because he fell off his horse and died and now was buried in the cemetery for the prisoners of war, and I felt proud to be peeing there on the stupid wall that kept the prisoners of war locked up and removed and disappeared from the map, just like Ma used to say about the lost children, who had traveled alone and then were deported and wiped off the map like aliens. But later, inside the car looking back at the cemetery, I just felt angry because peeing on the wall wouldn’t have mattered to the people who had built the wall around the dead prisoners, and then I was angry for Geronimo and for all the other prisoners of war, whose names no one ever remembered or said out loud.
And these names I remembered every time I peed out in the open like a wild beast. I remembered their names and imagined they were coming out of me, and I tried to write their initials in the dust, different ones each time, so I wouldn’t ever forget their names and so that the ground would also remember them:
CC for Chief Cochise
CL for Chief Loco
CN for Chief Nana
S for the priest woman called Saliva
MC for Mangas Coloradas
And a big G for Geronimo.
RHYTHM
We opened our eyes again when the sun was up, and I heard a motor, which at first I ignored because I thought it was dream noise. But you also noticed it, so we decided to walk toward that sound. We followed it for a little while, down a rocky slope, until we saw a man at the bottom of a road, a man with a white straw hat sitting on his tractor pushing hay into a neat pile. My strategy was clear from the beginning. When we approached him, you had to keep quiet and I was to do the talking and would fake an accent and sound in control of the situation.
So the first thing I said when we were finally a few steps from him was, hello sir, and can I take a picture of you dear sir, and what’s your name sir, and he looked a little surprised but said the name’s Jim Courten, and sure thing young man, and then after I took the picture, he asked us our names and where we were going and where were our parents this fine morning. When I heard his name was Jim Courten, I almost cried out with joy, because that meant he was the owner of the Jim Courten Ranch I had circled on my Continental Divide Trail map, and so I knew we were on the right path. But I didn’t show any feelings, and I knew we couldn’t seem lost because I wasn’t sure we should trust him yet, so I lied, told him our names were Gaston and Isabelle and repeated the line I had already made in my head before he even asked the question: I said, oh, they’re just at the ranch back there, Ray Ranch, and are busy with stuff ’cause we just moved here. We moved here from Paris ’cause we are French, I said, all in a convincing French accent. He was still looking at us like he was waiting for more words, so I said, French children are very independent, you see, and our folks told us to walk around and explore to keep us busy, you know, and asked us to take pictures to send back to our French relatives, and when he nodded, I said, could you maybe give us a ride to the Big Tank so we can take pictures of it? Also, we said we’d meet our folks there. I’m not sure if he believed us, and I think he was a little drunk because he smelled strong, like gasoline almost, but he was nice and he took us to the water tank, where we waved goodbye, pretending we knew our way and pretending, especially, we were not nearly dying of thirst.
When he was gone and the motor sounded like the memory of something far away, you and I looked each other in the eyes and knew exactly what the other was thinking, which was, water, and we ran for the water, and we got down on our bellies by the shore of the running river and first tried to cup our hands, but it was no use, so we made an O with our mouths like we were insects and drank the gushing gray water directly from the river as if our lips were straws. I could see your little teeth and your tongue coming out and disappearing back in as you sucked in the water.
CLIMAX
According to the Continental Divide Trail map, we were only ten miles from the next town, which was Lordsburg, where there was a train station that I hoped would have trains that went west toward the Chiricahuas and Echo Canyon. I tried to explain this to you, excited and proud of how well I was following the map, but you weren’t really interested. Later, sitting by the shore, still hungry but not thirsty at least, I was trying to figure things out, and I took things out of my backpack, like some matches and my book and my compass and my binoculars and also some of my pictures, which were all in a mess inside the backpack, and put everything on the mud all lined up next to one another. There was the picture I’d just taken, of the rancher on his tractor. You said the rancher looked like Johnny Cash, which I thought was really elevated for your age, and I told you, you’re so smart.
>
It was an okay picture, except the rancher looked like he was fading under a bright fountain of light that I didn’t remember had been there at all when I took it. And then I remembered also that I’d taken some pictures of Pa where he looked like he was disappearing, under too much light. So I scratched through my stuff to find those pictures, and I did. One of them was of one day when we drove on many roads and crossed Texas and Papa stopped the car in the middle of the highway, which was empty anyway, and we both got out and I took a picture of him next to a sign that said Paris, Texas, and then we got back in the car. And the other one was of one day when we went to the town called Geronimo on our way to the Apache cemetery and Papa parked the car again next to the sign that said Geronimo City Limits and I took a picture.
Now, lying there on the mud by the shore of the tank, you and I, I realized these three pictures looked so much like one another, like pieces of a puzzle I had to put together, and I was looking at them, concentrating hard, when you suddenly came up with the clue, which was good and smart but also terrifying. You said: Look, everyone in these pictures is disappearing.
SIMILES
It was late afternoon when we finally reached Lordsburg, and we’d been walking for so long though I’d thought we had been so near, and we were thirsty again because there had been no other water tanks on that part of the way, just two old windmills, which were abandoned, and also closed or abandoned shops like Mom and Pop’s Pyroshop, and a huge billboard-like sign that just said Food, which I took a picture of, and later the cemetery, and when we had finally left the Continental Divide Trail, there was an abandoned motel called End of Trail Motel, which I also took a picture of. When we reached the big highway that would take us straight to Lordsburg Station, there were also strange road signs saying things like Caution: Dust Storms May Exist and another one saying Zero Visibility Possible, which I knew meant something about bad weather conditions, but I smiled to myself thinking it was like a good-luck sign for us because we’d have to be invisible now that we were going to enter a town full of strangers.
Lost Children Archive: A Novel Page 26
