by Kurt Caswell
And there was something else too, and it struck me very hard then, riding along in Mary’s little truck, up the mountain track through the cloud-capped mountains, the gorgeous pines, the solemn alpine air, the great world open and opening before us. It came to me then that I had lost my belief in America.
Before Borrego, I could wander, travel, move, I believed, because I carried with me a sense of home, an idea of my home, of America as the purest, most noble, and even last good place on earth. This narrowed into the landscape of my native Pacific Northwest, and narrowed even more into Oregon and Idaho, and my family who are rooted there. It didn’t matter where I traveled, what I saw, how desperate and lonely I might become out there passing through strange places, strange lands, because I could always return to the safety and sanctuary of home. “No man can wander without a base,” wrote Bruce Chatwin, and I believed him. I had not seen it all, but I had seen enough to prove to me that America was the light. I had seen the dirty street poor in the Czech Republic; desperate-looking North Africans on the night train to Irún; Gypsy children in their tattered clothes haunting the markets and squares in anywhere-Europe, far too young to be panhandling, I thought, or manhandling fat tourists headed for yet another museum; the sleazy shysters who haunted the Moroccan border fleecing travelers who were into more than they could handle; the gaunt, rib-bare fishermen on the Li River in Guilin. I could see all that, experience all that, and still feel balanced because America was the counterweight. I thought it would always be there for me. It would always be the example of how to do it right. It would always be the best place to live, the only place to live—but now, after Borrego, I wasn’t sure. Was the world really this harsh and dark and seemingly indifferent? Was there no place untouched by human suffering? Was there anyplace to go except on? I felt like I had just awakened to reality. At Borrego when I looked for the light, I always came up with more darkness. I felt the loss of this belief in America very powerfully, and I acknowledged that I had lived for all my years in the fog of an illusion.
Moving across the miles to the flea market with Mary, I already began to dread going back. I never wanted to see Borrego again, because to return was to crystallize the realization I had just come to. I would have to face it, and I didn’t want to. The only way out was to never get off the road. When we arrived at the flea market, I knew, the only miles left to us were those of our return, and for me our day would fall into sadness. I wanted to keep going. I wanted the conversation never to end, my friendship with Mary to remain unchanged, my body never to age, the mountain country to transform into desert and back into mountains as I moved through them and finally to the sea, where I would not stop even then. I would board a ship and stand at the railing while the ocean, that pure and unlimited road, took me far and beyond, even to Timbuktu.
On the last day of school at Borrego, I met with my eighth-grade class in the morning. We had until lunchtime to clean up my classroom, pull down all the posters and student work on the bulletin board, return any unused supplies to Alice, inspect all the textbooks for tears and excessive scribbling, sort them into neat piles, and cart them off to Lauren’s classroom for summer stowage. After lunch, everyone would assemble in the front parking lot for a field day, a melee of games and contests to celebrate the end of things. The school year was over. Just like that. Soon the buses would pull away, and the kids who had been so much a part of my everyday life these past months, those I had cursed, those I had praised, would be carried away with them. I knew I would never see them again.
But there was time yet before all that. In my classroom, we set to work. William Brown tackled the wall hangings. Renee and Mary Jane took the more challenging task of inspecting and sorting the textbooks. Juanita Hunter and Virginia Puente sorted and returned the unused supplies to Alice. Vanessa Angel and Teresa Smith sat outside on the front porch in the sun making jokes, maybe having a chew. Jerry Valdez didn’t show up at all. The rest of the kids wandered around inside the trailer classroom or outside the building making long forays out into the playground or over to the Special Ed trailer to peer into the windows and make faces at whoever was in there. We finished in about an hour.
“What do we do now, Mr. Caswell?” said William Brown.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Any ideas? We can go for a walk,” I offered. “We’ve got almost two hours until lunch.”
“Naw,” William said. “I’m too tired.”
“Tired? You hardly did anything, and it’s not even ten o’clock in the morning.”
“Yep,” he said. “Too tired. Maybe I wanna sleep now.”
“Let’s just hang around over here,” said Teresa. “Let’s don’t do nothing.”
“No,” said Juanita. “Let’s do something.”
“Right,” said Renee. “Let’s do something.”
“Let’s go over there to the Trading Post,” said Mary Jane. “Rosie maybe will give us some stuff over there.”
“Yeah, okay,” said William. “Let’s go over there.”
“I thought you were too tired,” I said.
“Yeah, but she might give us some stuff,” he said. “I’m not too tired now, Mr. Caswell.”
“What if she doesn’t?” I asked. “Then you’ll have walked all that way for nothing. And you’ll have to walk back too.”
“No way. You can come get me in your truck,” William said.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Sure you can,” said William. “You got lots of money and a real nice truck too. You can give me a ride in it. I can’t walk it back. My legs are all somehow.”
“I got some money,” Juanita said. “We can buy some stuff over there.”
“Me too. I got a little money,” Virginia Puente said. “We can buy something over there for everyone.”
“Buy it for me,” William said.
“All right, let’s go,” I said.
Everyone inside rushed out the door. Everyone outside, noticing the group of us headed toward the cattle guard, came following along.
“Hey, where you guys goin’?” Vanessa asked.
“Over there to the Trading Post,” said Renee. “Maybe we can get some stuff over there.”
“Is it?” Teresa said.
“My idea,” said Mary Jane.
“Right,” said Renee. “Her idea.”
“Come with us,” William said. “Mr. Caswell will come get us in his truck!” He grinned at me. “Let’s not go out the road,” he said then. “Let’s go on the path back there. It’s too dusty on the road.”
Renee and Mary Jane turned and led the group back through campus. We passed my trailer, then Juan Carlos’s trailer. We squeezed through the gap in the fence. We walked the pathway along the edge of the mesa in the cover of juniper trees. It wasn’t too warm and it wasn’t too cool. It was a great day for walking.
We climbed over the gate that kept Merle’s cows in or out and went up the front steps of the Trading Post.
“Well, hello there,” Merle said, as we came in. “Brought in some friends, I see.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good morning. Last day of school, you know. We ran out of things to do.”
“Well, bringing me a load of customers is as good a thing to do as any.”
Rosie stepped out from behind the counter. “All right. All right. All right. You talked me into it,” she said. “One ice cream and one soda for each of you.”
Everyone cheered. Perhaps they had done this before? The kids went immediately to the ice cream freezer and stood with the door open, the cold air rushing over them.
“Ahhh,” William said. “Feels good.”
“C’mon, I can’t see in there,” Teresa said.
“Come over here,” Renee said. “Get your soda first.”
Teresa stuck her tongue out at the group crowded around the ice cream freezer and joined Renee to select a soda.
Moments later the kids rushed the front counter with their choices. Rosie rang them all up on the cash register. “The
total is . . . nothing!” she said. “You kids have a great summer.”
“Thanks, Rosie,” Renee said.
“Yeah, thanks, Rosie,” William said. “See my new teeth!” He grinned.
“Those are real fine,” Merle said. “Now don’t be gettin’ into no more fights.” he said.
“No way,” said William Brown. “No more fights. I like my teeth just like this.” He grinned big again.
Merle nodded his head. “Have a great summer, you kids.”
“Thanks, Merle!” William said.
Then everyone else chimed in, “Thanks, Merle. Thanks, Rosie.” They pushed and stumbled out the front door into the sun.
The kids sat on the front step of the Trading Post for awhile with their ice cream and sodas. After a bit, someone got up, and then someone else, and soon we were on our way back, this time walking along Borrego Pass Road. Teresa carried a little camera with her. As the group spread out, she stopped the few of us trailing in the back.
“Let’s take a photo,” she said.
“All right,” Renee said. “Yeah. Let’s take a photo.”
“Hey, yeah. Let me do it,” William said. Chocolate bits clung to his lips and hands.
“Not like that,” Teresa said.
“William, clean up your face,” Vanessa said. The girls giggled.
William wiped his hand across his mouth and rubbed it on his pants. “Okay now,” he said.
Teresa handed him the camera.
We stood back off the road across the ditch and William snapped a photo.
“Here, now I’ll get you guys together,” I told them.
I traded places with William and snapped a photograph of the kids smiling in the sun. I snapped another photo and the film came to the end in the camera. I handed it to back to Teresa. She put the camera back in her little bag, her camera with those stills of their smiling faces, their ice cream and soda happiness, their last-day-ofschool bliss. There was a little pause in the action, like we were not yet ready to move on, like we were waiting for a sign to urge us into the future. Then someone shifted a little, which was sign enough, and everyone got up and started walking again, walking together through the bright morning, as William talked and talked about nothing, Mary Jane scowled like she was already old enough for the rocking chair, Vanessa kinda plodded, plodded along, her shoes dragging too much like they didn’t fit her, Teresa flittering about like a little bird either with too much energy or not enough, and Renee looking up at the cloudless New Mexican sky and south into that distant vista as we traveled the long dirt road leaving a happy trail of our own dust.
I came to leave. A new job came through for me, and I was on my way to teach at a private boarding school in Arizona. I loaded my truck, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, left the keys on the counter near the kitchen sink, and pulled the door of the trailer closed. I had put all the pottery shards and the few arrow points I’d collected at Borrego into a small box and set them on the floor of my truck before the passenger seat. I’d left everything else I stole out of the desert inside the trailer—the hutch I’d found with Mary, the table I built from timbers rescued from the Borrego sands, the few enamelware cooking utensils I borrowed from the derelict hogan on the hill. I thought it best to leave as much of Borrego as I could behind. But the pottery shards and the few arrow points?
I wanted to keep them.
I wanted to return them to the desert.
I took up the box of potsherds and with Kuma started out on one last desert walk. We would do well to stretch our legs before the long drive, and I also wanted to stop in at the school to call Sakura from the pay phone.
“Hello?” I said over the telephone.
“Hello,” Sakura said.
It was very early in the morning in Hokkaido, and I could hear in Sakura’s voice that she had awakened to answer the phone.
“How are you?” I said.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “You? This isn’t your usual time to call.”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you. We finished school the other day, you know. I just had to call you before I leave.”
“Oh, good.” she said. “And now you go to Arizona?”
“Yes.”
“I’m wondering if you ever stay in one place?”
“Me too.”
Then she said, “I need a someone to make a home for me.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
“So maybe you can’t stay in one place,” she said.
“Well, it isn’t that,” I said. “I just don’t want to live here anymore. I can stay in one place when I find the right place.”
“You won’t find it. You keep saying that. To yourself, anyway.”
“I think I will. One day. But this isn’t my home. How could it be? I can’t stay here.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” she said. “Anyway, I know you have to go do a something. Whatever you have to do. Without me, I mean.”
A long silence went between us. Was this the end, then? I felt relieved and sad and a little desperate. Our fantasy of marriage had been a fantasy, and now this ending came simply, like rain from a soft cloud.
“Without you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You know it.”
“Okay, but we don’t have to lose touch,” I said. “We can stay in touch.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe we will.”
“I think we will.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Do you want to?”
“I do,” I said.
“Okay, me too,” she said. “Let’s keep in touch a little.”
“I’d like that.”
“Me too,” she said. “I have one thing to tell you,” she said. “I thought something. In December, that bracelet you gave me. I thought that was proposal. You know, for a marriage? You should know for your future case. My case doesn’t matter anymore. But I want you to know about it, because maybe you can break someone’s heart.”
She waited for me to say something. I was sorry, so sorry for hurting her, and an overwhelming loneliness came into me then. I felt it rush up into my head and I was struck with the fear that I’d made a mistake. I knew, however, that this rush of fear and loneliness and loss would harden and dissipate when I got out on the road. And I’d feel different then, unable to be in touch with the same feelings that moved me now. What could I say to her except apologize? Over and over. Take it back. Ask to have her back again. I hated the hesitation in me, the fear that I’d fail at any choice I might make, or that it would be the wrong one, or that I would regret it later. I didn’t know where that came from, if from some defect or deficiency in me, or from the place I was living. It wasn’t the choice itself but the hesitation that felt so much like defeat.
“I hope you understand me,” she said then.
“Okay, yes. I understand you,” I said.
“I hope you do. At least, maybe you will sometime.”
“I’ll write to you,” I said, trying to sound hopeful.
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe I’ll write back.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Goodbye, then.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
And she hung up the phone.
I stood there with the telephone in my hand. The light coming in at the entrance of the school was yellow and brilliant, so bright I closed my eyes against it as I looked up. For a moment then, blinded by the sun, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I did not think of Arizona and the new world that waited for me there. I did not think of the summer ahead at Bread Loaf in Vermont. I did not think of the long drive and the beautiful country that would unfold in front of me, the way the desert would rake me and cradle me and empty me out. I wanted to dial Sakura’s number again, take back the conversation we’d just had and try it again. What was it in her that convinced me we had no future together, and made me want, so desperately, a future with her? Or was it in me, rather, not anything about her at all? That was it, I knew, no matter how
much I wanted to deny it. I knew it was in me, that had I been true and settled and rooted in place, had I not felt such desperate and terrible wanderlust, had I not, she would have embraced a life with me, wherever, even right here at Borrego. I could not hold that center together, I knew, and to call her again would have been the most cruel kind of lie, the most ugly and vicious selfishness. I backed away. I hung up the telephone and backed away, the sun coming in over my shoulders, turning me around, inviting me out, again, into the desert.
Through the gap in the fence behind the school, Kuma and I walked out into the desert flats at the foot of the mesa that we had come to know so well. We followed the edge of the sandstone walls around to the little arroyo where dozens of potsherds lay scattered and broken, where I had gathered up most of the pieces now in the box. The area around every juniper near this little wash was all cowed out, bespattered by countless cow pies spread and drying in the sun. The sandstone ledge there was as familiar and perfect to me as all my images of home. The way the wash drew down from it, the curve there and how my footprint remained week after week, week after week, and the bluebirds flittering about, the red-tailed hawks cruising the current there, the long desolate flats colored with spring desert flowers sweeping south into the Rio Puerco.
