The Vanishing Point

by Judith Van GIeson

  The highway passed through the villages of Velarde, Embudo and Pilar and then it began to climb, winding up out of the ravine onto a vast plateau that offered one of the most spectacular views in New Mexico. Claire always felt that she was coming from a dream state into full consciousness here, out of the underworld and into the light. Today the mesa was spread with a white cloth. The mountains were a slate-colored backdrop. The gray clouds that Claire had seen earlier had reappeared, but had shifted so they were stacked on top of each other like a flotilla of flying saucers. There had been snow on the road, but most of it had run off or melted.

  Right before Taos, Claire turned east on Route 64, which gained elevation as it passed through the ponderosa pines of Carson National Forest. The snow was deeper here, covering the ground and weighing down the pine branches. There were places where the trees shaded the road and the snow lingered in the shadows. Claire drove carefully, gripping the steering wheel, fearing that she would come around a curve, hit a snowy patch, and spin out.

  It was a relief to leave the woods and enter the wide-open Moreno Valley, the largest valley Claire had seen anywhere. Here the sun had warmed the road and melted the snow. The valley was a field of white. Eagle Nest Lake danced in the wind. The runway of the Angel Fire airport pointed at the cloud formation Claire had been watching, which had realigned so it graduated in size from top to bottom, giving the effect of perspective. The air was so clean that Claire felt she could taste the freshness. It was a day that had wings, a good day and a good place to go looking for the truth.

  The Vietnam Veterans Chapel sat on a hill looking across the Moreno Valley. Claire saw its sweeping lines as the prow of a ship or swept-back wings, although she knew that from the back side it could be seen as arms open in a welcoming gesture. The white stucco exterior had the rough texture of ruffled water. Dr. Victor Westphall, who had built the chapel as a memorial to his son David, believed the area was sacred ground, that a line of force emanating from Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico, passed right through the site of the memorial.

  As Claire drove up the hill to the parking lot, she checked the clock on her dashboard again. It was ten-fifteen, and the lot was filling with vehicles. Many were junkers, older beat-up models of trucks or subcompacts. The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the lot, highlighting the shabbiness of the vehicles. Claire read the bumper stickers as she circled the lot: NEVER FORGET THE VIETNAM VET, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH VIETNAM, SUPPORT YOUR POW/MIA’S. Although the majority of license plates were from New Mexico, many other states were represented. Claire didn’t see any vehicles she recognized, and she wondered whether anyone would recognize her. Her truck was anonymous enough in some ways. It had no bumper stickers, distinguishing dents, or dings, but it did have a UNM parking sticker on the windshield. She hoped her presence would be unexpected, and no one would think to look for her truck or to check her windshield.

  She parked at the far end of the lot, locked her cell phone and camera in the truck, and walked downhill to the memorial. In addition to the chapel, there was a visitors center with a library, an auditorium, and an exhibition area. A triad of flagpoles stood at attention in front of the visitors center. The flags of New Mexico, the United States, and POW/MIA snapped in the wind. The people who milled around in front of the building wore denim and fringe, looking like faded hippies and ragtag warriors.

  Claire walked back up the path and entered the chapel, which was always left open so people could visit at any time of night or day. The contrast between the narrow, dank interior of the chapel and the vast, white Moreno Valley was striking. Inside was an altar with a slit for a window. Offerings were placed in front of a wreath full of miniature flags. Vietnam-era music played in a constantly revolving tape, and Jane Fonda was always out of favor. David Westphall had lost his life in an ambush during the Tet Offensive in 1968. The loss of the son became an obsession of the father. Sometimes Claire thought he should have accepted the loss and let go of it a long time ago, but she knew that his obsession had brought comfort to many. The chapel saddened her, and she didn’t linger.

  She went outside and walked back up the path, checking the parking lot again on her way to her truck. By now the lot was full. A white Dodge van with New Mexico balloon plates had taken a space at the end of the lot nearest the highway. Claire walked past the van, noted that it seemed unoccupied, and continued on to her pickup. She unlocked the door, took out her camera, inserted her telephoto lens, and looked through it, pretending to be photographing the view, but in reality checking to see if anyone was watching. She didn’t see anyone she recognized or anyone who showed her undue attention, so she went back to the van. The rear window was covered with calico curtains and so was the one on the side, but the side curtains didn’t quite meet. Claire walked to the front of the van, looked through the windshield, and made sure no one was inside. The front seats hid much of the interior, but through the space between the seats she could see the handlebars of a motorcycle, a motorcycle she was sure had Missouri plates. It was close to the eleventh hour, and the service was about to begin. Claire saw a couple of people heading away from her down the path, but no one else remained in the parking lot. She tried the handle of the side door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked tight. She put her forehead against the glass and peered into the space between the curtains, grateful for the New Mexico sun that blasted through windshields, and x-rayed parked vehicles, turning them into ovens. The window let in just enough light so she could see the olive drab duffel bag that lay on the floor beside the motorcycle. A serial number and the name Louis Bastiann were written on the bag in large black letters. Claire had no doubt that this was the bag that had been in the cave in Sin Nombre Canyon and that, if she examined it, she would find a layer of Utah dust. Unless she broke a window, though, she could only guess what the bag contained. Breaking and entering went beyond the scope of the investigating Claire would allow herself. She walked behind the van and memorized the license plate number, then turned and went to the visitors center.

  The service had begun. Claire looked through the door of the auditorium and saw that every seat was taken. People leaned against the walls with their backs to enlarged photographs of soldiers and Vietnamese children. The lectern was draped with an American flag. She had picked up a program in the foyer, and she used it to identify the people sitting on the dais: Dr. Westphall, who was in his eighties now; a woman poet; a male folksinger; an elder from the Taos Pueblo; a chaplain and an army colonel wearing a well-decorated uniform. The only faces Claire could see were those of the people who sat on the dais or leaned against the wall. Mostly she was looking at the backs of heads, which was enough to tell her that the audience was a New Mexican mix of Anglo, Indian, and Hispanic, about 60 percent male, largely middle-aged. She saw gray heads, blond heads, bald heads, heads of shiny black hair. The chaplain stood up and opened the service with a prayer.

  Claire left the auditorium and went to the library, grateful for the chance to have it all to herself. She ignored the computerized educational display and looked at the bulletin board, which had a supply of blue Post-its for leaving messages. There were dozens of them stuck to the board, with the ends curling out. Vets sharing their struggles, their memories, their dreams, their poems. Vets looking for other vets. Children of vets searching for information about fathers who had died in combat. One young woman left a memorial for her grandfather, the drawing of a tombstone inscribed RIP, a poignant reminder to Claire that those who served were her age or older and could well have grandchildren by now. Veterans Day eventually became a ceremony for old men, men who had lost their fire, but she didn’t see that happening yet. She read through the messages, wondering if there might be one that had meaning for her, half listening to the service in the auditorium. The chaplain finished his prayer, the poet read a poem about a heart full of fire, and Claire found a thought in a handwriting that she found familiar. “Sometimes life is a flowing river, sometimes it’s a well run dry.
A name or legend carved in stone lives forever.” The unsigned message wasn’t carved in stone. It had been written with a ballpoint pen on a blue Post-it attached to the bulletin board by a sticky substance that enabled Claire to remove it and put it in her pocket.

  The colonel began to speak. His voice was amplified by a microphone, and Claire could hear him clearly when her attention wasn’t focused on her search. He said that he had been a helicopter pilot in country whose job was to ferry out the wounded and the dead. “I came home with a concrete heart,” he said, “that it took a chisel to break up.” He talked about a ceremony he had attended at the Wall. It seemed inevitable, at a Vietnam event, that sooner or later someone would start talking about the Wall. Claire had been there and thought it was a magnificent tribute, reminding her in some ways of Victor Westphall’s chapel—wings or arms emanating from a vanishing point. An end, but also a beginning. The colonel recounted the experience of touching a name he recognized and seeing his own reflection in the polished, black surface transforming into an image of the person he knew. Claire had had a similar experience. The colonel said there were a hundred thousand people at that ceremony and he could feel the eyes of one of them staring at him so intensely it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  On the table near the bulletin board Claire found the book that listed all the names inscribed on the Wall in alphabetical order. She opened it and began turning the pages, stopping for a minute to listen to the conclusion of the colonel’s story. At the end of the ceremony, a man he didn’t recognize came up and asked if he’d worn a helmet with a lightning bolt painted on the side. “Yes,” the colonel replied.

  “You flew me out in your chopper. You saved my life,” the man told him.

  Claire had come to the B’s in the book. She scrolled down until she found the name she’d been looking for, Louis Bastiann. There were more than 58,000 names, and duplication was to be expected, but there was only one Louis Bastiann. He died a month before Jonathan Vail disappeared. Time enough for the effects and duffel bag of the fan with no family to be shipped home to his hero. If Jonathan had been contemplating honoring his draft notice, the death of Lou, his fan and alter ego, could have been the straw that convinced him to flee. He’d been presented with a ready-made identity, the clothes and the dog tags, and an excuse—death might well be waiting for him in Vietnam, too. He had Jennie, who was willing to con law enforcement and give him two days’ head start. He didn’t even need to go to Mexico or Canada. He could travel most of the world as Lou Bastiann and never be discovered, planning, perhaps, that one day, if amnesty were ever granted, he would come back and finish out his life as Jonathan Vail. When Jonathan split, he was a little-known regional writer, but during the time he was gone, the mystery of his disappearance and the impact of A Blue-Eyed Boy turned him into a legend, a legend that Claire herself had helped to perpetuate. If he’d come back as Jonathan Vail after amnesty was granted, would Jennie have been willing to let him go on being the hero and taking credit for a book she had written? What would his life have been like? Claire wondered. He would have faced the contempt of some for dodging the draft and of others for allowing his name to be put on a book written by someone else. He might have been full of doubt about his writing talent, troubled by the relationship with his family and with Jennie. If he reappeared as himself it would be as a flawed human being, but if he went on living as Lou Bastiann, the legend of Jonathan Vail would survive. He could be both a legend and a man. “Sometimes life is a flowing river, sometimes it’s a well run dry. A name or legend carved in stone lives forever.”

  But the discovery of the journal had changed everything, raising the issue of publication and giving Jonathan back some control of his destiny. Claire wondered who went to the cave to retrieve the duffel bag, Jonathan or Jennie or both? The van could belong to either of them. Jonathan could have used her address to register the vehicle in New Mexico even if he didn’t actually live in the state or in the country. What had he or she been after? The duffel bag with the name Lou Bastiann on it could be seen as evidence that Lou had died and that someone was impersonating him. And there may have been something in the bag that one or both of them wanted. Tim might have come upon the person in the cave and stumbled into his own death. If that was the case, the evidence necessary to prove it was in the white van in the parking lot. Claire looked down at her hand, which was stalled beside the name of Lou Bastiann. There were close to 60,000 names in this book, men, mostly, Jonathan Vail’s age—many more identities he could assume if he escaped from Angel Fire.

  Claire had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she had stopped listening to the colonel’s speech. It came as a surprise to hear the mixture of applause and ululation that followed. She closed the book, walked to the auditorium, and looked in. The audience was giving the colonel a standing ovation. Visibly moved by his speech, men and women hugged and cried. The folksinger asked for his guitar. The audience began to sit down. Claire didn’t find Jennie Dell’s blond head in the crowd, but the profile of Lou Bastiann/Jonathan Vail stood out. He wore a denim jacket and a bandanna folded into a headband. When she spotted him, she stepped out of the doorway. The folksinger began to sing “This Land Is Your Land,” inviting the audience to join in.

  Chapter Eighteen

  CLAIRE WALKED ACROSS THE FOYER AND STEPPED OUTSIDE into a day that had turned blustery. The trio of flags resembled dragons that coiled and snapped in the wind. The sinuous lenticulars she’d seen earlier had become billowing storm clouds. The air had the feeling of incoming snow. She looked over the Moreno Valley, considering her options, wondering whether Jonathan had seen her. If she had to confront him, she would prefer to do it when there were other people close by. The program listed several more speeches, indicating that the ceremony would continue for some time.

  Her cell phone was in her car. She could use it to call Ellen Frank, but before she did, she stopped to consider the consequences of making the call. Her job had been to preserve the legend of Jonathan Vail, and the legend would be better served if she kept what she’d discovered to herself, which might also be what Harrison would prefer. Would he or Ada really want to learn that their prized archive was the work of a fraud? That Jennie Dell had been the author of A Blue-Eyed Boy? That Jonathan Vail had spent a good part of his life hiding out as Lou Bastiann?

  While Claire considered her options and weighed her obligations, she hugged her arms to her chest to keep out the wind. It was too cold to stand outside and wait for long. She looked through the door to the visitors center and saw that the foyer had remained empty. There was no indication that Jonathan had seen her or had left the auditorium. Overriding any other consideration in her mind was the loss of Tim Sansevera’s life. She began walking up the path toward her truck, eager to get out of the cold but feeling that her shoes were weighted with lead. The wind whirled, picking up dust and debris. The arms of the chapel reached out. Behind her the flags fluttered and flapped. Claire pulled up her collar to ward off the cold and kept her head down to keep the stinging dust out of her eyes.

  She didn’t hear footsteps, didn’t know Jonathan was behind her until he tapped her shoulder. She spun around and faced him, knowing she was the one who had been deceived yet feeling she had just been found out. Jonathan wore dark glasses. The wind tugged the gray hair from his headband and curled it over his head.

  “Claire?” he asked. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Jonathan,” Claire replied.

  At first he seemed incredulous, tipping his head and staring at her through the dark lenses. “You know?”

  “Yes.”

  He exhaled then, and his body language expressed relief, as if he’s just dropped a backpack that had long been a burden. “We need to talk. Let’s get out of the wind.”

  Claire felt no need to talk, but Jonathan took her elbow and edged her toward the chapel, pushing open the door that was never locked and guiding her inside. The chapel offered shelter, but
the wind whistled around the prow and entered the building through crevices and cracks. The sixties tape played on, with music drifting in and out of audibility as if it were being transported from a distant concert on the wings of the wind. Claire heard Credence Clearwater Revival sing “Have you ever seen the rain?” before the music faded out. There was a dampness inside the chapel that suggested the concrete walls hadn’t set. She leaned against the stucco in the entryway, feeling faint and dizzy.

  Jonathan leaned against the opposite wall and raised the dark glasses. He wasn’t wearing the tinted lenses that had been his cover, and Claire saw the blue eyes that the writer had been famous for, the eyes of a young man buried in the wrinkles of middle age. Coyote eyes, she thought. Trickster eyes.

  “How did you find out?” he asked.

  “Lou Bastiann’s name is on the Wall and listed in the book in the visitors center. He died in 1966.”

  “You must have had some reason for looking there,” Jonathan insisted.

  “I always believed that if Jonathan Vail were alive he would have come back and claimed the admiration due him. Then I tracked down Jennie’s novel and read it. The similarities between her book and A Blue-Eyed Boy are obvious. If she wrote A Blue-Eyed Boy, Jonathan Vail could be anywhere. He might have been the man Sam Ogelthorpe saw kill his cow or it might have been Lou Bastiann. I had only your word and Jennie’s that Lou Bastiann was in Vietnam in 1966. I needed to find out for myself.”