Sky Bridge

by Laura Pritchett

  I glance at him and smile, because I’m realizing that here is a person who’s just going to say things, and that already makes him more interesting than most of the world. Nobody else I know says stuff like this, just honest stuff—something other than cars, or gossip, or the weather, stuff that just gets closer to the heart.

  “My sister’s gone. Just suddenly gone. From Durango. We can’t find her.”

  “Okie-dokie. Yep,” he says, nodding. After a bit, he says, “Some people, they want to be invisible. At least for a moment. So they can move from place to place without being seen, for instance. Only then, because they’re trying to be invisible, they’re not. For example, most of the illegal immigrants get nabbed because of routine traffic stops. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “And most of those were caught on Highway 160, between Durango and Alamosa. More illegals are caught there than any other place in this country.”

  “By Durango? Is that true?”

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “Ed, I’m sorry. I’m not very smart. I’m not just saying that. It’s a fact. I’m telling you this because I need to—because I’m trying to talk with you for real, because you are and I don’t know what the hell you’re saying. I’m sorry.”

  He looks at me and smiles. “Okay, what I mean is, most people spend their whole lives trying not to be invisible. This is what we all want, right? To be seen by someone? Someone who matters to us?”

  This part makes sense to me and I nod.

  “I don’t mind telling you, because I feel like I know you well enough—well actually that’s ridiculous, because I don’t know you so well, but I’m willing to take a risk, and anyway, sometimes you just look at a person and it seems that you know her—but anyway, anyway, I just picked up some ilegales. In a little town outside Durango.”

  “What?”

  “These people needed to stay invisible so la migra didn’t get them. And your sister was supposed to pick them up.”

  “What?”

  “But she didn’t—”

  “My sister? Tess? I—”

  “I don’t know that for a fact. But I’m operating on instinct, and my instinct is pretty good. Instinct and gossip. I keep an eye out, and that means I just know about certain things. Your sister was the contact, I think. A girl drives, less suspicious. Girl driving on a Sunday, when fewer INS agents are out—good thinking. Girl driving an old pickup with a tarp on top, or an old van, no problem. Okay? But something happened to her and she didn’t show. Luckily, one of the fellows had my name and number and so I drove up to get them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I’m getting there. A coyote arranged their transportation. You read the news, right? Semi-trucks hauling illegals, sure, there’s that. But also young female drivers, who don’t look suspicious. And this was Tess’s job, but she didn’t show. You don’t know anything about this?”

  “No.”

  He looks at me to see if I’m telling the truth, and then nods to himself. “Well. I’m sorry to surprise you with it, then. Luckily, I have a VW bus. Very handy for some sorts of things. Orange, even. That’s a fact, for sure. The more obvious you are, sometimes, the less people see. You put something right in front of them and it’s too there to be noticed.”

  I stare into the alfalfa. The little purple flowers are bobbing up and down in a breeze. “Let me get this straight. There were some illegals that Tess was supposed to pick up, but she didn’t, but you did. And they’re here now? They’re safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Miguel’s group?”

  “No.”

  “Tess was doing this as a job? For money?”

  “It’s good money. Very good. One of the best ways to make money out here these days. That’s a fact.”

  “Well, where is she now?”

  “She’s fine, I suppose.” He pushes his glasses up. “Listen. There’s two routes for people coming here. One’s through Texas, up to Kansas. The other, for people crossing in Arizona or New Mexico, brings them to southern Colorado, through the mountains. Through Durango. She was a stop, transportation from a store called El Mercadito. But she backed out, or there was a miscommunication. If she was smart, she got the hell out of there, quiet. Extracted herself. You see what I mean?”

  “No. Yes. She’s good at that, disappearing.”

  He smiles. “Pretty sky, huh? It’s one thing to be invisible. And another to be a pelagato—a nobody. It’s a fine line. But that’s a little bit off the topic, isn’t it?”

  “Ed, what do you know about my sister?”

  “I got word that she left. Just left. And I would know if it was something else.”

  “Something else, like what?”

  “Like, you know what else.”

  I put my hand on Amber’s head. I realize I have the money my sister got paid but maybe didn’t earn. I realize that I don’t know what kind of world I live in. I realize that all this time I’ve been not seeing. It makes me feel sick.

  “Ed? If you picked them up, then nobody’s mad, right? And she’s safe, right?” It comes out as a whisper.

  He nods. “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “Thank you, Ed.”

  “You’re welcome. But I didn’t do it for you. Or for her. I did it for them.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Qué bueno.”

  He smiles. “No sabía que hablas español.”

  “Estudio el español un poco.”

  “I think we should all be living more dangerous lives. We have to be careful, yes. But when we get too fearful, we become small.”

  For a while, we walk in silence, past the alfalfa and into pastureland. Amber stares ahead and kicks her legs and does this new thing, which is to make a soft little coo, which has got to be the prettiest noise, especially when you compare it to the screaming she usually does. I think I’m paying attention to it because I don’t know what to do with Ed, or his words, and I can’t think yet about my sister, and so all I can do is focus on something simpler.

  “Tulip gentian.” Ed points to a purple flower.

  “Tulip gentian,” I say.

  “I think humans are only capable of small moments of honesty. Then they get tired and back away. It’s something to foster, this ability to keep it for longer. How to keep being honest and aware. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Yes, sort of. Actually. I can’t keep up with you.”

  He turns to me and smiles. “Yes you can. You’re meeting me head on right now. I appreciate it. Cone flower, there, see that yellow one? Baxter’s field is in good shape.”

  “People say that. He’s a good rancher.”

  “I wonder if he lets the cattle in this pasture. Not for a while he hasn’t. There’s scarlet mallow. We become invisible to each other, and we fight to become visible again. It’s a constant battle, and it wears us out. And the only thing I’ve figured out is that we stay alive to each other if we can stay honest and aware.”

  “Scarlet mallow? I’ve always wondered. Because that’s my all-time favorite.” The flower is peach colored and the leaves have a tint of sagey color to them, and Ed knows I’m not just listening to the flower names, he knows that I’m listening to it all.

  “Yellow-headed grackle,” he says, pointing to a bird sitting on a bush.

  “It’s pretty.”

  “You seem like a strong person. Like maybe someone who can absorb a lot.”

  I snort-laugh and give him a look like, Whatever.

  “No, really. And that’s something I’d like to learn how to do. Face things better. Be a little more sturdy.”

  “I don’t think I’m so good at that, actually.”

  “You’re brave like the ilegales. You move forward and you do it. You take a baby, you raise it. You don’t make it complicated, you just do it.”

  “No, really. You don’t know—”

  “Well, we all see strengths in others, and we use them to teach ourselves. I’m a pr
etty happy guy. But sometimes—this world, it’s being ruined. But look, look, all we see is this grass and sky.” He swings his arm over Baxter’s pastureland. Up ahead is a gully, its bank lined with bushes and tall grasses, and far beyond that a small rise of red rocks. “It’s why I moved here. To be in a place where I felt it less. Felt the pain less. Because otherwise I think I’d put a gun to my head.”

  Something about his voice tells me that he means this. It’s the most fragile thing about him, and he wants me to know it. I can’t just say nothing, so I finally blurt out, “Jeez, Ed. Don’t do that. Please don’t do that.” Then I add, “I had a gun to my head, once.”

  He looks at me, surprised but steady, and his eyes won’t let go of mine. “Did you?”

  I reach down to pick a scarlet mallow flower to press in Amber’s book. “It was my girlfriend who put it there. She wanted me to feel what it was like, to be feeling that kind of pain. Ed, are you far away from that place now?”

  “Far enough.” He’s looking ahead and he’s scared, because we’re talking about something real. And then I feel him smile, in his body, because he feels found by someone, and he feels that I feel it too.

  And isn’t it funny how if one person speaks for real, then the other person can too? We just did that. We just became friends. It’s just a matter of finding the right person and crossing that barrier together, almost like you’re holding hands, but really you’re holding the most tender place inside you.

  It’s the dark morning hours before the sun comes up, and Amber’s up and I’m so sleepy I start to cry. I cry while I put on her diaper, make her a bottle, and the tears drop down onto her tiny body and into the fuzz of her hair, and I’m too tired to be angry, I’m too tired to be anything. I flop on the couch to feed her and I flip on the TV. Nothing good is on, so I settle, finally, for a show where a man’s painting an oil-color and telling me how to paint the exact same picture. Half an hour, I watch him, and watch his painting unfold, and I’m glad for Ed but not for what he told me, and I think about Tess and how she’s been lying to me this whole time. Why didn’t she just tell me she was running illegals? It makes my cheeks burn, and I’ve been seeing the world in such a simple way, and I never wanted to believe that about myself, but now it’s so true, not even I can miss how stupid I am.

  Somewhere along the way, Tess knew she was going to leave this baby, and that she’d need a way to make it, and that she was going to run illegals, and that even though we’d told each other everything our whole lives she decided to keep this a secret. And Clark lied, and maybe Miguel even knew. Maybe I did too. Because what was I thinking when she gave me that money out of nowhere, when I knew Clark hauled alfalfa? Who knows and who knows and who knows, but now I feel myself sinking down, too far down, where it just doesn’t feel safe.

  Tears are sliding down my cheeks—stupid me—and I hold myself so still and I watch the painter’s hand add ultramarine blue above fading down into cobalt, and he says that in the early paintings of the West people didn’t believe the artists, didn’t believe the sky could be that color. But it is that color, and that the people of the West understand something about the color of blue and its variations, more than most people.

  I try to pull myself up and out of this buzzing sadness by staring hard at the TV. I think maybe the artist has been out this way, because he’s painting a stretch of dry grass and an earth-red ridge, but mostly he’s painting sky. His painting is good but not great—even I can see that. Because it looks like life, but without the spirit. Without something underneath. But I like the title of it. He calls it “Sky Bridge.”

  He says that only in a place like this could a person touch sky. He says a person doesn’t move into the blue on a mountain or a skyscraper—no, those places actually push the sky farther away. Only in a place like this do earth and sky come together in such a way that they bridge into one, and in such a place a person could put up her arms and find herself in heaven.

  When Tess picked me up at work that same day she told me she was pregnant, I was smiling. It had only been a handful of hours, but I had spent all those hours thinking and dreaming. Tess was driving Kay’s truck, and she leaned over the seat to open the door for me. “You got to get your car fixed, Libby. Kay says she wants thirty cents a mile for all this extra usage of her truck on your account. She’s sort of kidding, but not really.” When I didn’t say anything, she added, “I know. I know what you’re thinking. How come we got stuck with this life—broke all the time, cars not running, living in the middle of nowhere, with Kay as our mom. But at least you’re not pregnant. Right?”

  “Tess, I’ve got an idea.”

  “At least you don’t got that hanging over you too.”

  “Tess, just listen. I got an idea. How about this? How about I keep your baby?”

  She laughed. “No way. Are you crazy?”

  “I’ll raise your baby.”

  “No.”

  “You won’t have to get an abortion. I’ll move to an apartment in town. I’ll raise it. I mean, you can help if you want. It’ll be so cute, don’t you think? Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s not a baby yet, Libby. It’s nothing.”

  “It might be. It will be. It will be something.”

  “Have your own baby.”

  “Well, maybe I will. Someday. But now is now, and now you’re pregnant.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I can just picture it, me holding a little baby.”

  “No. If you don’t want to take me, I’ll take myself.” She got all pissed off then, bitching about how at a moment like this she thought at least her sister would help. As she talked, I looked out the window at the nighttime sky and there were stars shooting through my whole body.

  I was thinking of Shawny. She’d died just a few months before. That’s not why I wanted the baby, though. I wanted the baby because Shawny had been wrong about things. And I was sorry that she didn’t feel this way much—that feeling of buzzing with energy and excitement, with life. I figured that if I faced it, it would be all right. That’s what I was feeling, and it was so damn strong I knew there had to be some truth in it. I knew I should be brave enough to brace myself and reach for something terrific while I had the chance.

  TEN

  There’s a place inside us that knows something before we know it. I’m cleaning the meat room when I see Derek walking down the chip aisle toward me and words fly into my mind: Oh, Libby, steady now, don’t let this hurt.

  Derek pushes the swinging metal doors open and walks right into the meat room at the same time I’m taking in a big breath to brace myself. The meat grinder is only half clean, but I put down the rag and pull off my yellow gloves. My eyes sting from the cleaning chemicals and I squint at him as I put my gloves in the sink. “Hey, you. But you’re not supposed to be back here.”

  “Ah, Frank doesn’t care.”

  “You want to go outside? I need a smoke anyway.”

  “Naw.” He looks around the room and nods a couple of times, like he’s agreeing with himself, and then looks at me. “Listen, Lib. Listen here. I’m sorry.”

  I let out a long breath and stand there, nodding.

  “I said all along this was coming. I meant to tell you the other night.”

  “You did.”

  “Not clear enough.” He puts his hand at the back of his neck and lowers his head to rub his neck and keeps his head lowered while he looks up at me. “Look, Shelley and me were at the movies. I know you’ve been trying to make it work. But keeping me and Amber separate, trying to show me that my life won’t change, that’s not right. I was waiting for you to do this. I figured you’d leave me. I think you want to leave me, but you won’t say it. And I think maybe it’s for the wrong reason. And I don’t know if I can stick around if I’m not sure you love me. I guess I’ve never been sure.”

  I nod to it all, because how can I disagree with any of it? What I finally say is, “Okay. Don’t worry about it. But remember our
deal.” Our pre-breakup agreement, I mean, which is that we’ll run into each other in this little town and the least we can do is be nice to each other.

  “Yeah, I’ll remember it.”

  I rinse my hands off in the sink and unclasp a necklace he gave me last Christmas.

  “You don’t have to give me that necklace.”

  “I want to.” I drop the gold chain in his palm. He has a cobweb of faded black lines from the oil he can’t ever seem to wash out of the creases on his hands, and the chain looks striking there in the instant before he closes his hand and plunges it into the pocket of his jeans.

  “Libby, it was you who came up with that deal. You know that, right? You were protecting yourself all along.” When I don’t say anything, he adds, “In any case—hell, I ain’t got what it takes to be a decent father. And how’m I supposed to be your boyfriend without being her father?”

  “You’d make a good father.”

  He stays silent for a minute, then says, “Someday , maybe. I do love you, though.”

  I smile at him, because how can I help it? He’s looking so honest and sincere and sorry.

  “We had some fun times, though,” he says. “I’ll say that. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, then. You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I want to tell you something. People are always talking about good hearts. So-and-so has a good heart. But there actually aren’t that many. Good hearts. Because people’ve got their own goals and selfish things to worry about. But you, you got an actual good heart. You really do.”

  I stare at him for a bunch of heartbeats, and then I finally say, “Jeez, Derek.” And I’m thinking, why didn’t you ever tell me this before? But all I say is, “Well, jeez.”

  “I know your life isn’t so great right now—”

  “It’s my own fault.”

  “—but what I’m saying is—If you need someone—”

  “I don’t need anyone.” I’m surprised at how soft my voice is, so I clear my throat and say it again, louder.