"What is it?"
"It's a fetish," Mary explained, "it's kind of like a talisman. My people carved this one from a special type of rock you can only find in the canyons—its magic is to bring happiness and prosperity to young married couples."
Alexa set the stone down. "We're not married."
"You're sure about that?"
"Of course I'm sure. Maybe if we were, he wouldn't have run off...."
Mary looked around, taking in the candlelight, the lingering fragrances, the roses she'd helped Adam prepare. "You know, there's more to marriage than a white dress and a piece of paper. And it's not about legally chaining someone to your side, either." She fingered the crystal necklace Alexa had left lying on the bedstand. "Marriage is what two souls do, on their own, when they're ready."
"Then it'll never happen. Because I don't know him and I'll certainly never understand him. Every time I think I could get close to him, he locks me out. Or runs away."
Mary picked up the quartz fetish and examined it closely. "Garrett's father was probably the oddest man I'd ever met. I don't think he said six words to me the first time he took me out. My father was convinced he was mute. Garrett, poor thing, took after me—you can't shut the boy up sometimes. Anyway, after that first date, I was convinced I'd never see him again, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to. Then he asked me out to the movies and I went. He said hello at the door, asked me if I wanted popcorn or a soda at the theater, then gave me a peck on the cheek and said goodnight when he took me home. So that's what? Ten more words? The third time we went out, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. And I amazed everyone, me included, by saying yes. Because our souls had already decided. The rest is just paperwork." Handing the fetish to Alexa, she stood up and moved toward the door. "I'll be up in a little bit to get the dishes."
Alexa looked at the fetish and then at Mary. "You know, Mary, he's really not a pig."
Mary stopped in the door and smiled at her. "I know. None of them are—once you get to know them."
It was a little after midnight when Adam quietly snuck back into the Crow Canyon Bed & Breakfast. Mary Crow was asleep in an armchair in front of the fireplace, which had cooled to embers. He tiptoed past her and up the stairs. The Indian woman opened one eye to watch him go and smiled.
Adam opened the door to the third floor suite tentatively, not sure what he'd find. It was only when he was in the van on the way to Flagstaff that he had begun to realize what a slap in the face his single- minded determination must have been to Alexa. He could hardly blame her if she was gone. He hoped to God she wasn't.
She wasn't. He found her asleep on the bed of roses, a vision in cream-colored satin and lace. He was struck once again by her beauty, her purity, and how he wished he could share in the serenity reflected in her sleeping face. He stood by the side of the bed, content to watch the candlelight play over the satin as it rose and fell in the rhythm of sleep. As carefully as he could, he set his duffel and the shopping bag he carried down on the floor by the nightstand.
The crunch of the shopping bag woke Alexa with a start and, still half-asleep, she called out to "Adam!" for help. He was at her side in an instant.
"It's okay, it's all right," he comforted her, hugging her to him. "I'm here. Nothing to be afraid of." She melted against him in relief, then, coming more awake, remembered she was angry with him and pulled away. "Alexa?" he asked, concerned.
"So, you came back."
"Of course I did. I would never leave you."
"Could've fooled me." The hurt in Alexa's eyes was nearly more than he could bear.
"Alexa," he dropped to one knee beside the bed, taking her hand and bowing his head to touch it, "I am a thoughtless, pathetic cad begging you for your forgiveness." He looked up at her with eyes wide and pleading.
He could tell she was amused by his melodramatics but trying hard not to show it. "‘Cad,'" she said after a long pause while she thought it over. "Now there's a word you don't hear every day."
"I'm forgiven, then?" he asked hopefully. She laughed and nodded her head. "You have my solemn promise it will never happen again," he said as he stood. "Now get dressed, I have a surprise for you."
Postcards From Alexa
Holy Ground
by Gillian Horvath & Donna Lettow
He pulled the van off the road on a narrow bit of shoulder, shut off the lights, leaving them in a darkness blacker than a city-raised girl like Alexa could imagine. A million stars twinkled overhead, obscuring the familiar constellations in the crowd of lights.
"What are we doing?"
Adam switched on a powerful flashlight, slid open the van's side door and pulled out a stuffed backpack. "It's not like they can put a fence around the whole canyon," he answered, shouldering the pack. "We're hiking in."
"Let me get this straight, we're breaking into a national monument? This was your surprise?"
"Well, technically we aren't ‘breaking' anything, we're just, well, trespassing a little. Watch out for that rock." He shone the flashlight around. The trail to the eastern wall of the Canyon wasn't nearly as obvious as it had been a hundred years ago. Somewhere along here the path used to fork near the old pine tree.
"Well, technically it's still a Federal offense. When you promised me I'd get to see things I never saw before on this trip, the inside of a women's prison was not what I had in mind, Adam."
"C'mon, where's your sense of adventure?" He reached back into the van, pulled out a smaller pack and handed it to her.
The canvas was crisp and new, and Alexa guessed the equipment inside was, too. "Have you ever done this?" she asked dubiously.
"I've lived off the land a few times. Don't worry, it's only a couple hours to the rim, easy terrain. Just stick close."
This didn't seem like the time to tell him that she'd never been camping, never been a girl scout, never hiked farther than the stretch along the beach below the university. Alexa shouldered the light pack, took the flashlight he handed her, and followed him into the woods. From farther away than she expected him to be, she heard him start to sing. "Oh give me a home... where the buffalo roam..."
The incline was gentle, but it was an uphill climb. It only took a few minutes for her to feel it, a tightening in her chest, her lungs tingling, then burning. She breathed through her mouth, the cold night air raw on her throat, her steps slowing as her legs flagged, lactic acid building to sharp aches from the lack of oxygen. She stopped to catch her breath, leaning her head against the nearest tree, her flashlight dipping to point at her feet.
"Alexa?" He was beside her immediately, dropping his own pack with a thud, hastily helping her off with hers.
"I'm sorry... give me a minute... I guess I'm a little out of shape."
"It's the air," he answered, realization cracking his voice. "We're at almost eight thousand feet." He kicked his pack over angrily, sending it skidding a couple of feet in the carpet of pine needles. "Damn, damn, damn, damn."
"I'm sorry, Adam, I'm sorry, I know how much you want to do this—" Her tears weren't helping her breathing any and she had to gulp for air.
"No, Alexa, it's not you, it's not your fault. I just didn't think... We'll just have to find another way." He grabbed up both packs one handed, gestured with his flashlight back toward the van. "Come on. I'll make a few calls."
She followed him back, wiping at the last stubborn tears, forcing herself to breathe deeply. Not her fault, he'd said. Whose fault then? When he'd offered to fill what was left of her life with adventure, surely he hadn't realized that she couldn't run, couldn't climb, couldn't even walk a few miles in the mountains.
She sat at the kitchen table with her coffee, letting the caffeine and hot liquid dilate her lungs, watching through the big back windows as the sun dipped sedately toward the hills.
Garrett's pickup pulled up outside and Garrett himself came in, pulling off his battered straw hat to wipe sweat and road dust from his glistening black hair.
"You k
ids having fun?" he teased, and, off Alexa's quiet shrug, took another look at her. "Where's Adam?"
"Making some calls. Trying to find someone who knows someone who knows someone who can get us into the canyon." A few calls had turned into a hundred calls, ranging from local rangers to an Under-secretary at the White House, and the day was nearly gone. "I wish he'd just let it go."
Garrett smiled fondly. "Adam tends to get a little bit of tunnel vision. When he wants something, he just goes straight for it. Forgets about everything else. And everyone," he added, catching her eye. "Why does he want to go there so bad, anyway?"
"He told me the whole canyon is a holy place, a place of peace and sanctuary. He said he wants me to feel safe." She shook her head in frustration. "I don't need a holy canyon to feel safe."
Garrett looked at her a long moment, his dark eyes unreadable. Then he clamped his hat back on his head. "Get in the truck," he told her. "And Adam's getting in, too, if I have to carry him."
He drove them in silence out Route 89 to the 64, refusing to answer questions. Adam sat silently against the opposite door, gazing blindly out at the painted desert, ignoring Alexa's exclamations at its beauty, until she finally stopped making them and sat quietly between the two brooding men.
Finally, at a right turn-out leading to a line of lean-tos staffed with locals selling crafts and wares, Garrett pulled the truck over. He came around and opened the opposite door, hauled Adam out by one arm. Alexa jumped down after him, watching in astonishment as Garrett dragged Adam past the line of jewelry stands, where the last of the vendors were starting to pack up for the night, and over to the western railing. "Look," he told him simply, almost angrily. "You think that Canyon is the only holy place we got out here? Feds don't own 'em all—not yet."
The sun was setting over the hills, pitching them into sharp black relief; below them, a gorge plunged away to dizzying depth. It might not be the Grand Canyon, but it was the earth at her grandest, her ancient secrets laid out in layers of rock too deep to fathom. Alexa gasped, her breath taken this time not by the altitude but by the view, and Adam turned to her, and his face changed. "Alexa?"
"Adam... my God... if this is what you wanted to show me...." There were no words. She put her arms around him and held on, feeling his heart beat against hers, looking out into what seemed like forever. "It's perfect."
He didn't answer, but she felt his hesitation, his unspoken answer. Beautiful it might be, but it was not what he had planned, not what he had wanted to give her. She tried again.
"I know you wanted to show me the Canyon," she said quietly, "But this..." She shook her head, still groping for words. She pointed to an outcropping across from them, where clean yellow stone showed the scar of a fresh break, a thousand feet of rock that had tumbled away in the last freeze. "This is all new. As new for you as for me. It can be ours. Not a gift from you to me... something for us to share."
She looked up at him expectantly, hoping he would accept this interpretation. Hoping, above all, that he would stop worrying about what he couldn't change, and accept instead what was. Great gifts lay all around them, if he would only get over the Canyon and all it seemed to mean to him.
He looked into her eyes, seeming to look at her, not past her, for the first time in two days. "I almost ruined everything, didn't I? I just wanted everything to be perfect."
"Adam, we're here. We're together. There's so much I haven't seen, or done... and no time to do it all. Do you think it will bother me if Parisians are rude, or Venice smells like a sewer? Do you think that matters?" She locked his gaze with hers. "Don't let it matter. Don't let it take you away from me. There isn't time."
He shook his head, marveling at her wisdom. She'd had too much reason, in the last year, to be cynical, but she hadn't let it happen. She wanted the world to be a wonderful place, with or without her, and he... In trying to make it perfect for her, he had nearly soured it.
He took her hand and walked her down the natural steps made by erosion of the rock, out onto a finger of mesa that jutted like a peninsula into the chasm. Blue railings were all that stood between them and the sheer drop—and, on a section of mesa off to their right, split off from theirs and at least ten feet lower, Alexa saw the remains of one of the stone posts that held the railings in place. In a few years' time, perhaps, the spot they were standing on would have tumbled into the void, but for now it seemed permanent, ancient, an observation post into the past.
"Listen," he said, and she did, and heard nothing. A hundred feet above and behind them, the vendors were packing up their stalls as the sun set behind them; a hundred yards beyond that, Highway 64 cut through the reservation. But no sound of voices or traffic reached them; not even a bird sang. It was true silence, and they stood in it together for a moment, drinking it in.
Garrett joined them, his arms full of Navajo blankets, fresh off one of the stalls. He handed them to Alexa. "Here. Kate says they'll be back to open up just after sunrise, so try and get your sacred stuff done by then. She'll bring you some coffee. I'll pick you up at 8."
They were spending the night here? Alexa was astonished to find that the idea did not terrify her—as long as Adam was here, she really did feel safe.
Adam clasped hands with Garrett, his face shining with pleasure, his voice earnest. "Garrett, I don't know how to thank you for this...."
"Well, you owe Kate two hundred bucks for the blankets," Garrett answered teasingly; then, more serious: "You want to do something for me? Tell me what it was like here before.... Before they put up the fences."
Adam stared at his friend for a long moment. There was no challenge in Garrett's expression. No anger. And no hint of doubt. He wasn't asking Adam to confirm what he'd guessed. But he wasn't leaving him any room for lying, now, either. The man deserved an answer.
Methos stepped to the railing, put one long leg over, then the other, until he was standing outside it, on the edge of the mesa. The rock was solid, but the feeling of vertigo was real. He barely heard Alexa's gasp of objection; he put out a hand to Garrett, as once one of Garrett's ancestors had put out a hand to him: "Come."
Garrett came over the fence, stood beside him at the edge. Every- thing was different here—the wind, as still as indoors just a few feet away where Alexa stood on the other side of the rail, streamed up out of the canyon, tossing Garrett's long hair, ruffling even Adam's short brush cut, carrying the scents of four states, of a whole, young country. In his stretch of lifetimes Methos had felt a thousand winds in his face—ancient desert winds, sweet heathered winds, the killing winds of Atlantic gales. The wind on the Painted Desert was like so much of Garrett's lost culture—you had to know where to stand, where to look, to catch it.
"Thats what it felt like," he told Garrett quietly, and Garrett stood a moment, drinking it in; then they both climbed back over the rail.
Garrett was silent, almost somber, as he moved to his truck; Adam put an arm around Alexa as they watched him pull out. One by one the other pickups with local plates pulled away, bearing the families who ran the tourist stalls, and they were left alone, watching the shadows of the setting sun against the immense canvas of colored rock.
He took one of the brown and white woven blankets from the pile in her arms, spread it on the edge of the mesa, as near to the railing as he dared. They sat together in the fading light, the remaining blankets draped over their knees, her head against his shoulder. Every moment of the sunset brought a new color to land or sky, brought a new detail of stone into sharp relief, or cast one into shadow.
"Look at it," Alexa breathed quietly. "You could come here every day for a thousand years and I bet you'd never see the same thing twice."
She was right, again. "Let this be our canyon, then. Forever." He reached out a hand to trace the line of her jaw, down her cheek, curving up to stroke along her mouth. It seemed she could feel every whorl of his thumb against her lip, and her lips parted as he leaned toward her, the sun behind him throwing the planes of his face
into relief as dramatic as the rockfaces around them. "Let's make it ours."
His lips met hers and his hand slid down to cradle her neck, and she tasted desert dust and wind in his kiss, passion and relief and a deep sweetness that could only be joy, the same joy she was feeling as she realized she had finally reached him, finally had the chance to be the strong one, the generous one. She would not, could not, be the rescued damsel—and wouldn't let him be the teacher, the father, in all things. She would give as well as take, or there was nothing, nothing between them worth having.
They sipped good Italian wine from the picnic basket Garrett had left them, watching the unbroken sky turn from orange to deep blue to darkest black. When the last of the twilight was gone, they were in a darkness greater than any she'd ever seen. There were no lights on the road above, no lights from homes anywhere—and on her right, some- how blacker than the rest of the darkness, the great chasm of the canyon. Adam was only a shadow beside her, more felt than seen, when finally Alexa whispered, "Are there really more stars here than at home, or do I just feel closer to heaven?"
He answered her softly. "Some people believe that every star you can see in the sky is the soul of a loved one who's left us."
There was quiet again as they both stared at the heavens. He could get lost in watching the stars. Civilizations would rise and fall, loved ones come and go in the blink of an eye, but the stars were always there, had always been there, would always be there. Like the Canyon they were formed long before him and would still be burning bright long after he had finally turned to dust.
"Where do you think I'll be?"
Alexa's quiet voice brought him back. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"With the other souls," she explained. "Where do you think my star will be?"
Adam wanted nothing more than to derail this conversation before it went any further. He didn't need another reminder of how soon he was going to lose her. But he knew it was important to Alexa to talk about it, to share the experience with him—just as he'd begged her to do. "See that bright one there," he said, pointing, "that's Venus, the goddess of love and beauty"
An Evening at Joe's Page 13
