Old Border Road

by Susan Froderberg

  Somehow we’re moving through the dark, silently, starlessly. Wheels turning. No use wondering. Only care about no more pain. I call out for my mother. The man behind the counter speaks.

  Yes? he says.

  Doesn’t he remember? He closes the book and puts the guitar down. He leads us through an empty corridor. Our Centro Médico. What’s left of a hospital. No, it never was. The man takes us into a room and puts a light on.

  What can I do? he says.

  He speaks as if he doesn’t know me. I could not be making sense. My voice keeps breaking. My words crack, falling away into nothing.

  We need a doctor, Son says. Why does he speak this loud?

  The man says there is no one but him and he will have to do. Lie down, he says. But I can’t without pain. They help get me onto the cot, and the man is shushing me, shushing me. He has Son unfasten my pants and the man lifts my shirt up. He puts his hand on the flesh as if feeling for warmth. He pushes on my belly and quick releases, and I jump at the touch and cry out. He shakes his head. He takes my temperature. You’re inflamed inside. I know, I say. I could have said. He says he can give me a shot. He says we need to drive to an actual hospital. Actual? That’s two hours west, Son says. I won’t go, I say. Whatever, the man says. It’s your pelvic cavity, he says. He turns from me in judgment. He furrows his brow. He makes notes on the clipboard, the laborious press of his pen turning a roaring scolding.

  I’m sorry, I say. The words settle onto the tongue like a tasteless wafer.

  The man holds a vial up to the light and sticks a needle into the rubber stopper. He draws from a syringe, taps the bubbles out, pivots me to a side. This will hurt, he says. He thrusts the needle into my hip. Go home, he says. Take these. Take all of them until they’re all gone. He hands the bottle of pills to Son. The two of them standing looking down at me, each to a side of the cot.

  That scar should’ve healed better, the man says.

  Son touches the place on his forehead.

  I look at the cracks in the ceiling.

  I wait for something more to be said.

  YESSIRREE-BOB, Rose’s Daddy had said.

  He was leaned back in the old oak swivel with his boots atop his desk.

  The tribes were tough minded in these parts, he said. Indeed, they were known for their warrior abilities and their know-how as far as how to live amid this dryland habitat. They were not hunter-gatherers, he said. In the stead of, as with most, they tended their home country as agrarians. And they surely had no thoughts of such talk as property or water rights. For the earth did not belong to the people who so dwelt upon it. Rather the people belonged to the earth. They thereby did believe.

  Rose’s Daddy knocked the burnt ash from the pipe bowl.

  Thus, when Governor Kearny spoke atop his mount to the surrounding chiefs, they would not have understood the underlying meaning of his discourse. Kearny stuck close to the words most invaders have used since ancient times, as he told the tribes he had come as a liberator, not a conqueror. Yet the loftiness of these liberators would be bowed down soon enough, and their haughtiness made low.

  Rose’s Daddy blew a quick shot of air out the pipe stem.

  All were humbled, he said. For a torrent of hot was soon thrust upon our borderlands, and hell did so enlarge itself then, and in this very place. The newcomers were the first to succumb. Many of them backtracked eastwardly. Some fled westward toward the coast, seeking refuge, hoping to escape the penal fire that had come down upon them. The going was rough, and there was no water to be found for days on end in what should have been a fortnight’s journey. But wheels stuck in the deep sand of the dunes along the way. And people became desiccated and hungerbitten. Mules and oxen died. Horses, babies, men, so many of them died.

  He paused to fill his pipe bowl with a wad of full aroma.

  And those that stayed here, he said, well, very few survived. Mainly the Indians, they who had learned to manage in this wasteland long beforehand. These people did what they did. They branded figures into their skin and covered themselves over with pigment. They buried what melons there were left to them beneath the ground. They punched holes into the burnt soil with sticks, and they filled the holes with seeds as was their way. All this, despite the heat. They embraced the boulders for shelter and lived within the shaded clefts of the earth. And they waited the fiery deluge out. They had no place they knew or wanted to go. Stay and wait, it was said the Indians said. And so be it, they did.

  The old man rustled about in his pocket for matches. He put the fire to the bowl and the stem to his mouth. He shook the flame out.

  Of course, then one day the rain did come. And the waters fell upon the fields. And the rivers swelled again to flowing. And the seeds greened from up out of the earth. And the fruit of the earth did so become excellent again, and there were bees and goats and honey and butter, and the land was once more comely to dwell upon. There were those who would make it to see these days, and some were left to speak of the past, and so too, of what remained.

  Rose’s Daddy studied the swirl of smoke about his head.

  And among them it was said, Whoso believes that man is greater than his maker?

  Now what do you kids say?

  I REACH FOR the glass of water at the bedside table and swallow the iron-tasting stuff down with one of the horse-size pills the man at the clinic gave me. The dry tablet scratches at my dry throat. The fever is past, but I take the pill as he said to do, and now to take one every day until all of them are taken.

  How many days have I missed?

  It’s Friday already, Son says. He stands at the end of the bed. You need to get yourself set up so you can eat something. Get your clothes on and come out to the kitchen. There’s a pot a coffee on the stove. You got some mail in a pile for going through. A postcard from your mother from some place or other. A letter from a school.

  Maybe tea, I say.

  I’ll put you some water on, he says. He goes to the window and draws the curtains open. Light pours in and washes over everything, and in that moment all is turned pure and good again. I feel myself brought into being. I get out of the bed, moving as if I’m just learning how to do it, thinking there might again be pain with as much as a turn or a shift, but no, no pain anymore, just that careful way of walking left in me. Just an empty place inside where the fire burned. A pure empty place where all will grow new and good again.

  I go into the bathroom and turn the faucet on and the water sputters its rusty color out into the sink. I cup it into my hands and splash it over my face. I look into the mirror, feeling today as the first day of any. I fill the water glass and drink the water down, gulping it, breathlessly, filling myself up. Now breathing. I brush my hair and put my clothes on and go into the kitchen.

  Son has put cups and plates on the table in the breakfast nook. I slide in and sit waiting. He puts a sugar bowl out, and knives and spoons, and he puts a tea bag into my cup and pours hot water in with it. He brings a plate of buttered toast and asks me about jam, and I shake my head. He pours a cup of coffee for himself and sits down across from me.

  This is you, I say. I push the envelope his way. Did you forget to pay your posse dues?

  I paid my posse dues.

  He takes the envelope and works it apart with a thumb. He takes the folded paper out and opens it. He moves his lips as he reads. To hell with them, he says. Bunch a old losers anyway. He wads the letter and tosses it across the kitchen to the wastebasket and misses. He picks his coffee cup up and looks out the window. I go back to the pile of mail, sort through the bills, the final notices. Then I come to the letter from the school. The letter I had waited for for a long time, until I had finally not cared anymore, or so I thought.

  Aren’t you going to open it? Son says.

  Later, I say.

  Later, he says. And he gets up from the table.

  After he leaves I sit in the pale quiet of morning light. Arrange my cup of tea to the one side of me, put it just so. Move
my plate of toast more to the left. Fold my paper napkin into a perfect square and tuck it under the lip of the plate. Everything now has its order and place and I must get it all right. My spoon here, and here my knife. When everything is arrayed out before me correctly, I sit and study it, feeling the pleasure in the placement of things. Now to keep everything this way, the world this way, and there won’t be any need to worry. I take a sip of tea, tasting the iron in it past the pekoe. I add more sugar to the cup, stirring clockwise, then set the spoon in its proper spot again. I don’t eat the toast, but know it for its place on the table and am pleased for that alone.

  It is all a starting-over.

  THE PADRE ANSWERS the call on the first ring.

  It’s me, I say.

  You, he says.

  I went to the Quechan woman. I’m calling to thank you.

  Life is ever fruitful, you know.

  I suppose, I say, hearing his words as no more than glossy talk now.

  This dream, he says. I’ve been wanting to tell it to you. And look, you called me so I could. I knew you would call. How did I know you would? Because I made you. You got the message. It’s this power I have, this ability to forecast things, to will things. Believe me. It’s something one has to practice at, and for a while, I was lapsed. But I have it again. I have it back. You don’t believe me, do you?

  What kind of dream?

  I see you in it now, ever so clearly, standing beneath an immense archway looking outward. You were beautiful, and ready to head into some beautiful unknown. I can still feel it, the dream. I can’t get it out of me, this vision of you.

  The pen goes in circles and swirls and curlicues over the paper, as though with an intent of its own. My hand follows along as the Padre speaks. I listen to the way his voice deepens on certain words and rises on others, the way he will pause before going on in order to add launch to the next thought, the way he will soften to add tenderness or delicacy. I hear how the measure and pitch of his voice would work on the ears of listeners sitting on Sunday benches, their chins at a tilt to look up at him. Are they told what they already know? Or do they wait for some new truth to be spoken?

  Maybe the me you dreamed in the dream wasn’t me.

  You are more than you think you are.

  Tap, tap, tap of the pen. I straighten my back. So much has changed lately, I say.

  Katherine. It’s you, you have changed, he says. You have changed remarkably in the short time of our knowing. I’m delighted for you. Truly.

  I may go back to school and make something of myself.

  You are without bound.

  I could use the rigor of it. The ritual and routine of it. A bell in the morning. Long hours alone. Books at night to look forward to.

  Do what will give you to yourself.

  The labored sigh of my mother escapes me.

  All you need do is go find your story. Tell it. Then live it.

  The scribbles turn to deliberate shapes of things.

  Just a place where there are stars to see at night would be a fine start, I say.

  They’re out there, he says. So go on. Go forward. Go find your place. Let the stars pour their spiritual rays out upon you. Lean your head back and drink them in. Enjoy the great spectacle that the universe bestows.

  Yes, so you’ve said this.

  The ink comes out on the paper in spirals.

  I speak to you from the heart. As I do the entire congregation. I tell you, most importantly, keep with your God and you will hear your God. Listen for God’s voice in the sweet melody of the birds, in the grand call of the morning, in the beating of your heart. Feel His divine love and His wisdom in the warmth and the light of the sun.

  I click the pen closed.

  See the soul as well in the treasures mankind leaves behind. Go to your Moses, or Plato, or Homer.

  Yes, go. I should go.

  Go to your Beethoven, your Bach, your Brahms.

  Go to your… Katherine?

  Hello?

  THE INSIDES WENT up in an immense surge of light and rushing of air, as if some proclamation had come in a sudden from above. Jesús went running. People tried. But no one was God. And everything inside was dry as tinder.

  Church cat, the sheriff said. He had a look of wanting to settle people down with a why for it.

  People stood by, nodding their heads, their faces radiant in the light, arms hanging at their sides, watching the groaning timber glowing hot as coal and blackening as the frame went caving in.

  Just imagine how it happened, someone said.

  I did. I could hear the totter of a saucer, see a spill become spark, a spark changed to flame. I could see the flame the way it flittered about for a minute—just a little bird, a sprightly hop before it shot up in a hot burst, turning a fit of bright shifting bodies of light. I could see the whole of the thing laddering heavenward, pillars of heat rising in the air of the in-between, bending and stretching all forms in the sanctuary, distorting the very emptiness of space above. There would have been a whiffling, or buffeting, like sheeting being opened and shaken, or sails caught in the wind, or a sound of coarse breath, a muffled calling-out, a wimpering in the seaming and knotting. The fire crackled and darted up the night-darkened panes. The ruby-colored runner atop the altar trembled before the cloth swelled to combust. The blaze rose in the sacristy and nave, with beams and pews roaring in glorious ascension, with the cross going up in a great serpent of flame. Bindings and pages of Bibles and hymnals reddened and bloated. Prayers and songs filagree’d upwardly, turning a float of cinder and drift of charred motes in the smoldering, all the words ceased now to nothing but remembering.

  Amen, someone said.

  THE SHERIFF DRIVES his sheriff car out to the house to deliver the news himself.

  Where’s that husband a yours? he says.

  It’s not my day to babysit him.

  No need to be a wise guy, he says. How come you’re never very nice to me? You still upset about the time your mother called me up to go and get you and drag your heinie on home?

  Yes.

  You sure like carrying your grudges, don’t you?

  I don’t like remembering being locked up inside the back of that car of yours. I turn away from the slab of shade the sheriff has parked in. As if I were a criminal or something, I say. Just looking at the car with that metal grating between the seats, like I’d been put into a cage, makes me want to grate my teeth—and all I did was move out of my mother’s house and get a place for myself and bothering no…

  Ah, the Sam Hill anyway. That was a time ago. You were balled up and confused. You’re a grown-up now.

  What did you come out here for? I say.

  Pass a message on to that husband you got. Tell him we’re letting him off highway cleanup duty early, he says. We consider he’s paid his dues by now.

  The posse doesn’t think so. They don’t want him anymore.

  How about you? he says. You want him anymore?

  The sheriff takes his hat off, the sun highlighting the pockmarks in his face.

  I hear you been through it a bit, he says. I hope you’re fine by now. Really I do.

  I look out to the emptiness of the landscape, the dusty earth about us aquiver with cicadas and their kin.

  THE LIGHT IS something from a time before. It has in it the fullness of what already was, as well as all of what could possibly be hoped for ahead. It’s a starchy light, or call it chalky colored, as I can’t think of how better to describe it. What it is, is the same veiled light that had come pouring in through the window to where we lay in the bed that morning back in our beginning. Was it Son that got up and drew the curtains full open? Because I can’t remember here what I had seen looking out the window, only that the glass was hazed by the drift of alkali, or of quartz, or some mix of these minerals that so softened the lens on us. But I do remember we were in a motel room, one of those places with the same dollar-something name to it. We were just finished making love another time, and the nig
ht we had been through was still in us, and the morning was all over us in the bed.

  Then the light is changing with no more of the past to be captured, and Son is talking to me about here and the everyday, putting us back to where we are again and the people we are since made into.

  We ought to think about getting us another dog, he says.

  The old man’s old dog stops panting and draws her tongue in.

  We don’t need another dog, I say. We have a dog.

  The old dog goes back to panting.

  It would do us some good. We need something new.

  Not a dog, I say.

  The dog gets up and shakes, follows me toward the front door.

  Where you off to? Son says.

  To the foothills.

  The foothills?

  To buy soap from a Quechan woman.

  A Quechan woman?

  A Quechan.

  Soap? he says.

  Soap, I say.

  NINE

  AT THE TOUCH OF A HAT

  He did not come by to say good-bye. His leaving came from Pearl to Ham and Ham to Son and Son to me. Ham told Son that Pearl had worked it out for the Padre to take the chapel up north in the mountains, as the village minister there had more than a serviceful since the inflow of desert folk. It was told the Padre spoke to what was left here of his congregation in a makeshift meeting house put up in the plaza—a rented tent much like the one Son and I celebrated our matrimonial day in on the eve of the vows. People said the Padre talked about listening inwardly and advised letting the voice inside you be your guide. They said he closed his eyes and raised his arms, palms turned heavenward, his fingers quivering. Said he opened his eyes back up, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and jingled loose change a minute before he gave a nod of the head and said he was leaving. So Son said Ham said people said the Padre said.