by Giles Blunt
“Obviously. Which is why I spent seventeen years in jail.”
It was amazing to Max that such a frail creature as the Pontiff had become could contain such quantities of negativity. Of course, the dreary little room with its plastic glasses and straws, its faint smell of urine, its lurid TV clamped to the ceiling, was not conducive to good cheer.
“Come for a ride with me,” Max said. “Get some fresh air! Make a world of difference.”
“Tell you the truth, pal, I don’t even remember you.”
Max bowed his head. “I grieve to hear it.”
“I don’t have a clue who you are.”
“Max Maxwell, ne Magnus.”
“I know who you say you are, but I just don’t know who you are. You think you’re a character, right? Think you’re colourful. But you’re just another blowhard got lots of personality and no fucking character. There’s no person inside that belly of yours. And one day the belly shrivels along with everything else and you end up a fucking zero. Less than a zero-a minus sign, a decimal point, empty fucking space. Get used to it, my friend.” The bony hand gestured again: the empty chair, the nightstand devoid of gifts and cards. “This is the way a thief dies.”
Max was uncharacteristically quiet as they drove through at least a hundred miles of the desert that is west Texas. The plains and cactus looked as if all moisture had been sucked out of them thousands of years ago. A pale yellow light cast the world in a sickly, overexposed glow.
But Owen was feeling great. He had to look back at Sabrina every five minutes or so just to make sure she was real. He could not believe he had slept with so beautiful a creature. And she for her part had developed a new smile, where just one corner of her mouth lifted, a smile of complicity. He wished Max hadn’t confiscated her cellphone. Even though she was sitting about two feet away, he would have sent her a text message saying, “Stay Forever,” followed by a million exclamation points.
Max was driving with fierce concentration. He spoke without taking his eyes from the road, as if addressing the hot asphalt and the desiccated landscape it traversed. “Young lady,” he began, “you have made no inquiry concerning your father.”
“No,” Sabrina said from the back seat, “and I’m not going to, either.”
“I shall tell you how he’s doing anyway.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Your father, I regret to say, is clearly mortal,” Max said. “Growing more mortal by the hour. The body is suffering, no question. But the spirit of the man! He’s driving the staff crazy with all the visitors. People bringing gifts, telling stories about the old days, wishing him well. Wanting to touch the hem, so to speak. I was moved, I don’t mind telling you.”
Owen feigned deep interest in a Blue Guide.
“And not a word of complaint about his illness,” Max went on. “Well, you could see it in the sweat on his brow, of course, and his eyes watering from the pain. Blamed it on allergies, the old master.” Sunlight glinted on the tears that now wet Max’s own cheeks.
“We saw this tiny Napoleon museum,” Sabrina said brightly.
“The man is on his deathbed. Can you not relent?”
No answer. They drove awhile in silence. Then Max said, “Why on earth is there a Napoleon museum in El Paso?”
“No one knows,” Owen said, “but they had a pair of his boots and a bunch of books that he owned. And we saw the cemetery where John Wesley Hardin was buried.”
“John Wesley? The religious founder?”
“The gunfighter,” Owen said. “One of the meanest ever. He shot one guy just for snoring.”
“No one could hold that against him,” Max said. “And what delights do you have in store for us today?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
The Guadalupe Mountains brought some relief to the monotony of the drive as they continued east through fields of prickly pear, cholla and agave. They stopped for lunch at a state park, where they saw mysterious pictographs. Whenever they stepped out of the Rocket, the ferocity of the sun seemed to suck the breath out of their lungs.
When the sign came up for the Carlsbad Caverns, Max was all for it until he saw the vast squat oval of the natural entrance. “No, no,” he said. “Impossible.”
“Come on, Max, they’re supposed to be spectacular. They’ll be all lit up inside.”
“I refuse to go underground until such time as mortality may require. You two go ahead. I shall meet you here in the Rocket exactly two hours hence.”
So Owen and Sabrina got to explore the caves in the company of sixty or seventy tourists. After the brutal sun of the parking lot, the cool of the caves was pure balm. Owen lent Sabrina one of his sweatshirts. The sleeves hung down past her wrists, giving her a waiflike look that didn’t suit her at all.
They walked through strange cathedrals and chapels of limestone. The immensity of the earth lay above them, but the soaring ceilings relieved any gloom. A couple of times he took her hand to help her up a slope, thrilled by the heat of her small fingers against his palm. He would have held her hand for the entire rest of the day, but Sabrina detached herself each time.
Stone glittered and gleamed in shapes of waterfalls and organ pipes. Clusters of stalactites tiny as straws pressed up against columns bigger than anything that had supported the Parthenon. They saw dazzling mineral deposits, carpets of gypsum dust, and the shimmer and bustle of microscopic cave life.
When they came out into the sun again, Sabrina said, “Thank you for taking me there, Owen. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
She pulled off the sweatshirt and handed it back to him. A photographer operating a small stand near the exit asked if they’d like a picture for two bucks, and Owen said sure. He took one of Sabrina and one of them together, and Owen bought both.
“I look silly,” Sabrina said, handing back the photo.
Owen shook his head. “You are so wrong.” As they crossed the parking lot, he said, “You know, I think being around you makes me dumb.”
“Dumb as in quiet or dumb as in dumb?”
“Both. I’m having trouble speaking. Am I just, like, the nerdiest guy you ever met? I can’t handle this.”
“Can’t handle what?”
“You. Being around you. You make me too happy. I keep feeling like there’s something urgent I have to tell you, but then I can’t speak.”
“Sounds like a nightmare.”
Owen shook his head. “Definitely not. Whatever the opposite of a nightmare is, that’s what I’m having.”
The Rocket was dark, the bedroom door closed.
“I better wake him up,” Owen said. “He tends to get confused if he naps too long.” He rapped on the bedroom door. “Max? Max, you really missed something. The caverns were awesome. Max?” Owen knocked louder before opening the door. The bed was empty. “Shit. He’s gone somewhere.”
“It’s awfully hot,” Sabrina said. “Maybe he decided to wait inside the shop.”
Owen pulled out his cell and dialed Max’s number. There was a dull humming sound. Sabrina checked the far side of the bed and found Max’s vibrating phone, holding it up for Owen to see.
Coming in for the landing, that’s the tricky part-or at least that’s how Max thinks of it. He is aloft somewhere (where exactly is another blank spot on his instrumentation), and he is flying blind, drifting blind really, because he has no sense of direction. He is a balloon, not a powered craft.
He might call himself a UDO if that term were available to him at the moment, an unidentified drifting object, because he is certainly drifting, having no clue as to his exact location, and definitely unidentified, having for some reason no mental access to certain personal records-for example, his name.
The (he assumed temporary) misplacement of his identity was not nearly so alarming as the monolithic unfamiliarity of his surroundings. It was not for lack of signs, landmarks, hints and indications. There was that greyish breast of a mountain in the distance, surrounded by less i
mpressive folds of agricultural cellulite. It was the sort of geographical formation you looked at and said to yourself, Ah yes, there’s, I must be near (home, Mum’s place, the office).
And there was a black and white sign, a shield-shaped piece of tin fixed to a metal post that said East 180. It was full of meaning, Max knew. It was like looking at a bottle full of a rosy translucent liquid, condensation dripping down its elegantly curved sides. It was meant to be drunk, begging to be drunk, but what it might be, or be called, or taste like, he had no idea. How could he? He had never seen this sign before. But he had the feeling that it contained important information, information that someone would understand.
Family, said the picnic bench on which he was perched. Definitely a sense of family at this currently empty table. But unmoored Max had no idea at this moment if he could expect a family to claim him or even if he had a family. Vehicles, said the line of cars, trailers, SUVs parked just to his left between the picnic tables and the washrooms. Yes, he retained the fact that those were washrooms, his underwear still a little damp from his having recently peed in one of them. But as to vehicles, well, he had walked up and down that row of angled chariots several times now and not one of them looked familiar. His anxiety was further stoked by the undeniable observation that the vehicles were constantly pulling away, only to be replaced by other, no less unfamiliar, vehicles. The tool of logic was still apparently available to him, and he employed it now, caliper-like, on this observation: he must be connected either to one of the vehicles that had already departed or to one that had not yet arrived.
His mind perched on this pillar of reason for a few moments, but the perch was not nearly as secure as he wished, because the logic widget had a certain implacability about it and was now presenting to his awareness two other possibilities: 1) that he had no connection to any vehicle that had ever been anywhere near this place, wherever it was; and 2) that no such vehicle was ever going to arrive.
An unfamiliar thrumming set up in his chest, which he supposed was fear, and he was hoping it would go away. O, let me not be mad-where did that come from? He could see the letters, black Gothic script snaking across the pale fog of his mind.
Family, the bench said again. Did he have one, whoever he was? Had he lost track of them while he was in the washroom relieving, none too nicely, his bladder? Here came a family now. Father: khaki shorts past the knee, colourful shirttail out, and enormous running shoes; Mother: honey blonde, ponytail, midsize breasts under T-shirt emblazoned with obscure image; Child: girl, elevenish, body straight as an arrow, with the skinny legs disproportionately long, sipping from an enormous drink.
Max sat a little more erect on his perch. He tried for an expression that was alert, approachable, a face ready to be recognized. This could be them. This could be the family he belonged to. I would have to be the grandfather, he reasoned. He further arranged his face into bland benevolence, the way a deaf person hedges his expression into a smile that could be taken either as agreement with the statement he has just failed to hear or simple recognition, possibly even the anticipation of a disagreement.
The little girl handed off the large drink to Mommy and looked toward him. Max smiled at her, saying nothing; he was a last Christmas present under the tree, waiting to be opened. She should be yelling something like, Hey, Grampa, aren’t you getting into the car? We’ll leave you behi-ind! Then he would hop off this uncomfortable table and join them in their private conveyance.
Time formed a cocoon of sorts around him, seemingly disconnected from other people’s hours. Within this cocoon, an image visited him, fleeting and gossamer, tantalizing: a woman, roundish in proportion, friendly of face, holding a shirt as if caught in the action of ironing. She asked him a question. It was English, but he didn’t recognize the words. She finished with an interrogative lilt on a single syllable. His name. His mind reached out for it, a feather hammocking its way down to the earth. He snatched at it. Gone.
Wisps of identity threaded the air before him, ungraspable. Self-knowledge dancing on the tip of his mind. Come, let me clutch thee. Had someone said that to him? A frisky nun, perhaps? Was he perhaps a priest of some sort? No prayers came to mind; very little of anything was coming to mind.
Certain intelligences were reaching him from the periphery of his being. Sweat was beading on his brow, rolling down his ribs. It was hot sitting on this bench in the open sun. No one else was doing this, he noticed. The only tables that were occupied were in the shade.
But best not to move. Someone would come to claim him. Yes,would come. And she would be … female. His wife. The lack of a ring told him that he was likely not wived, but surely would come. A son-in-law? That would imply relationships that seemed as remote to his ken as yet-to-be-discovered moons.
Ah. Another family group approaching. Twelveish boy, fourteenish girl, short round dolphin-faced momma, and a choleric man muttering red-faced into a communications device. Arrange brows, lips. Bring cheek muscles to bear. I might be yours. I can be safely approached and even transported out of this hot, lonely sun.
Owen and Sabrina left the Rocket and headed back across the scorching parking lot. The gift shop was packed with tourists examining Carlsbad books, DVDs and geological samples. No sign of Max. They checked the washrooms, the video exhibit. Nothing.
They approached a gallery attendant seated on a stool just inside the door, an Asian girl in a uniform that was too big for her.
“Have you seen a big English guy wandering around on his own?” Owen asked her. He gave her a detailed description, right down to the shorts and the argyle socks.
“No, I’m sorry,” the girl said with a jarring Texas accent. “Y’all might ask in the shop, though. Maybe he might coulda gone there?”
“Thanks.”
A cashier in the shop remembered seeing Max, but it had been at least an hour ago.
“Here’s what we do,” Owen said to Sabrina, trying to keep calm, although his heartbeat was shifting from allegro into presto. “You go that way through the galleries and I’ll go the other way, and I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes. There’s no way we can miss him if he’s in there.”
“Ten minutes. Okay.”
Owen walked to the end of the gallery tour and went in through the exit. The attendant was chatting on a cellphone and didn’t notice him. Sabrina passed him on her way through in the other direction.
“Well, he’s not in the washrooms, he’s not in the gallery, he’s not in the shop,” Owen said when they met up again outside the shop.
“Maybe he changed his mind and decided to tour the caverns.”
“Max never changes his mind. If caverns are bad, they’re bad forever.”
“Well, where else could he be?”
They checked the Rocket once more, but Max was still not back. They went to the main pavilion and reported their problem. A couple of minutes later Max was paged over the PA and asked to report to the information desk.
“Sometimes he gets a little, uh, bewildered,” Owen said to the woman at the desk.
“You mean he might not know who he is?” She had hair that was way too blonde for her age.
“It’s possible. It hasn’t happened before, but it’s possible. If I give you a description of him, could it be given to all the rangers?”
“We can give it to them by radio, hon. But it won’t reach into the caves, just to the entrance and exit.”
Owen left his cell number with her in case Max should turn up.
When they were back outside, Sabrina said maybe they should call the police.
Owen laughed. “Are you kidding? He’d never forgive me. It’s possible he wandered off along the highway. I’m just gonna have to look for him.”
They detached the Taurus and left the Rocket in the lot. Owen made a left at the entrance and continued in their original direction. Air shimmered and seemed to liquefy above the asphalt.
“It’s so hot,” Sabrina said. “I hope he’s not walking along the shou
lder.”
“You keep an eye on the right side, I’ll keep an eye on the left.”
They drove a few miles, taking it slowly, annoying the cars behind them. Owen stopped at a service centre with a McDonald’s, but no one remembered seeing Max there. A little farther and they came to a rest stop, just washrooms and a few picnic tables in the shade.
“There he is,” Sabrina said.
Max was seated at a picnic table, contemplating an apple in his hand as if it were a grenade. Owen called to him the instant he stepped out of the car, but Max didn’t even look.
“Max?” he said again as they got closer.
This time Max looked up, but the expression on his face was vague, uncertain, unMaxlike.
“Max, are you all right?”
Max looked from Owen to Sabrina, his brow a landscape of perplexity.
“It’s me, Owen.”
“Yes, yes. Well, of course I know that.” There was no conviction in his voice. “And the wife, obviously.”
“Max, what are you doing here? Why did you take off?”
“Bit tired, to tell you the truth. Needed to sit down.”
“You wandered away from the caverns, Max. We were scared to death. We didn’t know what happened to you. How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. We’re related, you and I?”
“Max, I’m your nephew. Your adopted son. I’m Owen.”
“Owen, yes. And your lovely wife.”
“We’re not married, Max-Sabrina is a friend. Let’s get back to the Rocket.”
“Rocket? No. You frighten me.”
“Not a real rocket, Max. The Winnebago. Come on, you better lie down for a while.”
Eventually they talked Max into the car and drove back to the caverns. Max gave no sign of recognizing the Rocket, but he was happy to lie down in the bedroom and close his eyes. He was asleep within seconds.
Owen was afraid to make any more stops after that. They drove for hours, not saying much. The highway unfurled across the Llano Estacado, an endless mesa dotted with tiny, unexpected lakes. Finally there was something green other than cacti-fields of cotton and alfalfa that stretched to the horizon. It was dark when the first oil pumps began to appear, and then they were in the land of stampedes and rodeos. Sabrina read out directions well in advance of the crucial turnoffs as they rolled along the vast expressways of Dallas-Fort Worth. With a minimum amount of confusion they found a suitable campground not too far out of town and parked the Rocket for the night.
