The Meaning of Isolated Objects

by Billie Hinton

  Wendell took two beers and retreated to the back porch, dark, a little muggy still. Something scurried across the yard and she reached for the flashlight beneath the bottom step. Aimed, pressed the rubbery circle with her thumb. And there she was. The armadillo.

  She froze, blinded in the bright beam, then turned and hustled away, out of the circle of light, back to her safe warm place. Which Wendell trusted was out there somewhere, along the edge of the dark summer evening.

  Early in the morning she returned to the cave and resumed her work. Just past noon the edge of the trowel scraped something hard. It took awhile to get around the perimeter, carefully so nothing would be destroyed. You never knew when you found something what it might be. An hour later it came loose from the earth. A tool or instrument made of antler, perhaps used to pry things from stuck places. She finished excavating and brought it to the house. Washed and polished, the grain and color of the tool was lovely, rich and striated. The thought of prying stuck things loose made her sad.

  She walked out to the car. Her ragged road map was folded in the glove box and she took it inside and spread it across the kitchen table beside the antler.

  Texas had seemed so perfect when she was in Charlottesville aching to get away. Her eyes tracked west again across the map. Pecos, Roswell, Albuquerque. She traced a line with a red marker. The map was a reminder. She was free to go.

  Grayson was stuck with the wife, Jolene, who had him by the balls with a divorce attorney waiting in the wings. He’d never said that exactly, but Wendell suspected she’d threatened him and he’d given in the way men sometimes did to women.

  She thought of the few times growing up when her father let the different parts of his life intersect.

  She remembered one time very specifically. Him standing by the corner of Angelina’s house after the wallpaper hanging party, half hidden in the shadow of the big oak tree, wearing green fatigues and no shirt.

  Wendell had been by the campfire with the kids, listening to a man play guitar and watching her daddy out of the corner of her eye. She got caught up in the song and the man’s voice wrapping itself around the words. He looks like a hippie on a Honda to me. He reared back a little on the stool when he sang that line. Across the campfire, his fingers plucked the strings of the guitar, licked by the flames that danced up between them.

  Someone thrust a stick with a dripping marshmallow into her hand, and she tested it with a finger before eating it. Suddenly she remembered to look for her father. He was still by the corner of the house, but now there was a woman with him, running her hands over his chest. Wendell was mesmerized by his hands, cast white in the moonlight that cut in across that pitched corner. She couldn’t look away as they dipped lower and disappeared inside his pants.

  She screamed. Her very sophisticated friend Angelina had told her before what this meant, what women did to men with their hands and their mouths.

  He came running, he thought she’d got burnt by the fire. She told him she wanted to go home. The woman’s voice. You’re spoiling that child rotten, Scott. Next thing you know she’ll be nothing but a teenage brat telling you what to do.

  All Wendell had to say was one thing: I want Aunt Jessie. He packed her into his car and swore everything was all right, that they could do anything she wanted.

  He bought her mint chocolate chip ice cream on the way home and they ate it right from the carton with two spoons. She watched the late movie on the sofa while he rubbed her feet. He sat up with her all night. He would have done anything to appease her. Anything so she wouldn’t tell Aunt Jessie.

  Wendell grabbed the antler and walked out to the front porch. On the right side of the bottom step there was a depression in the earth, and she started digging there with the tool, searching for nothing. She simply craved the feel of something in her hand displacing something else.

  In the dark she could have been anywhere, Virginia or Texas, New Mexico or another country. She could have been six or twenty or older. Anything could have happened. Tristan could have come by, or a stranger. Her father could have come home, or Aunt Jessie.

  The one possibility she didn’t indulge was what happened.

  A motorcycle, recognizable because of its single headlight and slight whine, came down the main road and stopped by the mailbox. The anonymous letter writer. She stood up and waited.

  From the other direction, headlights, then the soft purr of an expensive engine. The motorcycle pealed off like a bullet, and the car turned in. Grayson pulled up in the driveway and climbed out of his car.

  “She’s taken the kids to Galveston, to our beach house. I promised her things would be sorted out when she gets back.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea, Wendell. All I know is she left and I came here.”

  He pulled her to the bedroom and kissed her. They chased something together, not pleasure but something else. He wanted it and so did she, but they didn’t find anything. How could they, when it had no name either of them could summon. Instead they lay together, her hand on his chest. He fell asleep first.

  It should never have been called making love, this thing people did. What it was, was seeking. Everyone seeking something they couldn’t find.

  She didn’t know why he’d come to her again, but she was selfish and she let him stay.

  Grayson woke first and while she made coffee he found the map on the table. “What’s this?”

  “I’m thinking of going west.”

  He took the mug of coffee from the counter and drank. “Let’s take a road trip then.”

  Out in the middle of west Texas there was nothing but highway and rock. Hole in the wall gas stations stretched so far apart she wondered if they would make it from one to the next. Nowhere to stop and get a room, so they pulled off the side of the road for a break.

  Grayson dragged two sleeping bags out of his trunk and spread them on dry grass, illuminated by the car’s headlights. Once he got them set up, she flipped the lights off. It was so dark she couldn’t see to walk.

  “Over here.” His voice arrowed through the night, led her stumbling in his direction as though hit and wounded. She fell across his feet.

  “The sky, Wendell, look.”

  The sky was all there was, studded with glittering stars, more than she had ever seen in one sky at one time. The air itself seemed devoid of motion, as if all the atoms had paused in an effort to let the celestial vision shine.

  “I feel almost like a cowboy out here.”

  “Desperado.” He laughed and the tone of his voice dropped low on the last syllables.

  She wet her hair with water and painted his face with the fine chill of night. “Are you sorting anything out?”

  He put his hand over her mouth and pulled her down beside him again. “Just look at the sky, Wendell.”

  The next day they made it to the very edge of Texas, Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Pine Springs. While Grayson paid for a campsite, she scanned the park service brochure. The five highest peaks in Texas.

  El Capitan, a massive limestone formation, had been an ocean reef some 250 million years earlier. Amazing and difficult to envision in this heat. Swimming in cool salt water would have been heaven right then.

  Grayson returned, permit in hand, and tugged her along by the arm while she read.

  “There were hunter-gatherers here 10,000 years ago, we might see pictographs.”

  “Good. Let’s pitch the tent.”

  “And god, listen to this. Over 11,000 stars, the Milky Way. That’s how many we saw, Grayson, all those stars.”

  “Yeah.”

  She had dropped behind him and treaded sharply on his heel.

  “Damn, Wendell.”

  “Sorry.” She did it again.

  He spun around. “What is it?”

  “The stars.”

  He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven’t forgotten. That sky, your hair. It was incredible. But I’m hot and tired. I just want to ge
t the tent set up and lie down in some shade.”

  She walked past him. “46,850 acres of protected wilderness, untrammeled by man. Can we go there tomorrow? I want to walk where no man has walked before.”

  He snorted. “You’re confusing this with Star Trek. Someone sometime has walked every inch of this planet.”

  He needed sleep. She needed a break from him. They pitched the tent without another word. She spread the sleeping bags inside, parked the cooler close by the bags, stacked a couple of paperbacks next to it. That should keep him happy.

  He flopped down and covered his eyes with the back of one forearm. She pinned her hair back with a clip and wiped her face with the hem of her T-shirt dipped in the melted ice in the cooler.

  He fell asleep quickly. She had a sudden desire to call her father. Grayson’s phone was in the bottom of the pack but when she powered it up there was no signal. But she’d seen a pay phone outside the ranger’s office, so she grabbed her wallet and zipped Grayson inside the tent where his breathing rose and fell again, each time ending with a snort.

  The pay phone was in use, a young blond woman with a child who tugged hard at his mother’s cropped pants while she rubbed his curly head. Wendell sat cross-legged on the rough cement and waited, far enough away that the woman didn’t feel rushed. Wendell was in no hurry to get back to Grayson snoring in the tent. At least by the phone she could watch people come and go.

  Through the window of the ranger’s office she saw a man gesturing and talking. He had dark hair cut very short and a tattoo on one arm. His gestures were odd, and seemed to mean something more than was apparent. She found herself engrossed in a conversation she couldn’t hear. When he came out he saw her looking and walked over.

  “Hey.” He dropped down next to her and shook her hand. Up close his eyes were astonishing, pale blue to the extreme, wolf-like. It felt for a moment like the sidewalk had dropped out from beneath her body. She put her hands flat on the cement and anchored herself by looking at the tattoo that wound around his arm, a raven carrying a small branch lined with leaves and red berries.

  “You like the tat?”

  “It’s unusual.” She wanted to touch it, had to put her hands behind her back to keep from rubbing them on this stranger’s arm.

  “Staying here tonight?”

  She wished she were alone, but back in the tent was Grayson. The married man. The father of small children.

  “Yes, with a friend. How about you?”

  “With a buddy, Keller. We’re here for a few days, then heading to VLA.”

  “VLA?”

  “Very Large Array. It’s a radio astronomy lab. Did you see the movie Contact a few years ago?”

  “The one with Jodie Foster? Those big dishes.”

  “That’s it.”

  “You’re interested in UFOs?”

  “That’s not what they really do with the dishes. Creative license for the sake of the movie. They actually study quasars and pulsars, supernovas, black holes, that kind of thing.”

  “So what are you doing there?”

  “Sightseeing, mostly. It’s a neat place. A buddy did some work there last year and since I’m here killing time, I’m checking it out.”

  He stood up, dusted off the back of his shorts. His muscled legs were smooth, almost hairless. “Come have a beer later, bring your friend.” He winked and smiled, tipped his head toward the pay phone, which was now free, but she no longer wanted to talk to her father.

  She felt weird suddenly, a little dizzy but mostly her left cheek was tingling and it was as though she were no longer solid in her body. She sat for a while longer, breathing, pushing her hands flat to the sidewalk so hard the cement left its pattern on her palms. And then it seemed to pass.

  When she got back to the campsite Grayson was awake.

  “Where were you?”

  “I went to the ranger station to call my dad on the pay phone. There’s no signal out here.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “You seemed tired.”

  They ate protein bars instead of dinner and watched the sun set. She brushed her teeth behind the tent, spit white foam on the ground, covered it using the toe of her shoe. Inside the tent Grayson was still, eyes open to the night, waiting.

  She expected him to touch her but he didn’t.

  “This guy invited us to go have a beer at his campsite. He’s going to VLA.”

  “Let’s not.”

  Grayson opened his arms and she allowed him to fold her in. He smelled of sweat but the scent was subtle and not overbearing. They were both weary of driving and he was weary of camping, already.

  “A shower would be amazing right now.” His voice was right in her ear.

  “Do you want to do anything?”

  “I’m exhausted, girl. I can’t reciprocate.”

  They seemed to have left their urgency back in Austin.

  In the night she woke to the sound of banshees screaming in the distance, like a prelude to a massacre. Yips and shrieks that gave her goosebumps. It must have been coyotes though, since no one else was rousing and running away. After awhile they died down and a low whistle sounded right outside the tent. It happened again and then stopped.

  Grayson stirred in his sleep and put his arm over hers. She burrowed closer to him and he wrapped his leg around her. “Jolene.” His voice seemed tender, not at all the way she’d thought he’d sound, speaking to his wife in bed.

  “Grayson, wake up.”

  “What.”

  “You’re saying her name.”

  “What?”

  “Jolene’s name. You said it in your sleep.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why did you say it?”

  “We’ve been married fifteen years, Wendell. I can’t make that go away. Go back to sleep.”

  Grayson woke her up early. “Let’s get out of here and go to a hotel. My back is killing me.”

  She hadn’t been averse to that idea until he said it, but suddenly she didn’t want to go to a hotel, she wanted to stay and camp, not give in to his aching back. She wanted to do something different with him, not what he’d do with his wife.

  “Let’s give it another night.”

  He walked a few steps and turned back. “I’m going to the bathroom. For god’s sake, please think about a hotel.”

  She had wanted to go hiking and come back to a campfire with beer and dinner and muted wild sex in the tent. So far though, it hadn’t been like that. It had been protein bars and tepid water, no light after the sun went down, and coyotes howling while Grayson talked to his wife in his sleep.

  She sat at the picnic table and peeled a banana. The same low whistle from the night before sounded close by.

  “Hey.”

  It was the guy from the pay phone, Tag. He had coffee in a tin mug.

  “I’d kill for coffee.”

  “Have mine.” He pushed the cup across the table.

  “Thanks.”

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “He went to the bathroom.”

  “You didn’t come by for a beer last night.”

  “He wanted to stay in.”

  Tag’s eyebrows went up and for some reason it made her laugh.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  She laughed harder. “He’s married and he dumped me and now his wife has taken the kids to Galveston while he sorts me out. I have no idea what he is. Someone I wanted pretty bad about twenty-four hours ago.”

  “We’re heading out this morning. VLA. You could ride along.”

  The airline confirmed a seat to Afghanistan. He got to the airport with minutes to spare and boarded just in time for take-off. As soon as he was seated and the plane left the terminal he felt relief. Jess would never know this wasn’t work. He had some time to think things through.

  His repertoire for ways to deal with this kind of thing was limited. The only way he knew to make the ache stop over the one he cared about was to find one he didn’t. They we
re everywhere, for the taking. Like that woman across the aisle who kept running her hand through her long blond hair and glancing over at him.

  This was the down side. The only way to keep Jess out was to keep going for the quick empty fucks. He had done it for years and he guessed he could do it again.

  He’d used frequent flier miles to upgrade to first class. He was offered beverages and took a Scotch, stretched his legs, closed his eyes. Escape.

  The way she’d looked sleeping. Her assumption that they would share dinner. That he would not leave so soon. She gave him credit he didn’t deserve.

  Something said to him years ago.

  The true cost of anything is what we must give up in order to have it.

  He emptied his head and went to where Wendell was. She was waiting for something, he didn’t know what. He felt concern but not danger. He tried to go to Jessie’s house but it didn’t work. Never had, but he had wondered if their recent closeness might have changed that.

  He didn’t know how she would react to this part of him. How he lived so much inside his head. Navigated relationships by leaving. Kept the exits clear and open at all times.

  He got off the plane in Kabul and navigated the ramshackle airport, which was crowded and chaotic as always. He rented a small truck and drove toward the hotel he favored. Its outside still bore scars, but the rooms were clean and comfortable.

  The more severely damaged buildings he passed might never be repaired. The ruins weren’t abandoned. People still used them, lived in rubble.

  The filthy Kabul River flowed, and he smelled the rotting meat hanging in shop stalls through the truck’s open window. The traffic was hideous, pedestrians, bicycles, cars. Buses and trucks and donkey carts. He blew his horn like everyone else. There were no real rules of the road here.

  He was relieved to get to the hotel room. Twin beds, a night table and lamp. Shortly after he got inside the city was taken hostage by a dust storm. He was glad not to be driving in it.

  When he got still on the bed and closed his eyes he saw it again. The man on the motorcycle. Wendell. He waited, hoping it would go further, but his own hope shut it down. That’s how it worked with remote viewing. You couldn’t do it with a busy head.