This Glittering World

by T. Greenwood

  “You want me to get you some water or something?” she asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said, laughing awkwardly. He stood up. His mind was reeling. “I should be going. Will you be okay?”

  She nodded and stood as well.

  As he turned to leave, she said, “If he does die tonight, the funeral will be in the next couple of days. If you give me your e-mail address or phone number I can get you the details.”

  He turned to look at her. She was smiling sadly.

  “Sure,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a slip of paper to write on. He found a grocery receipt and asked the nurse for a pen. “And I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t get your name?” “Shadi,” she said. “Shadi Begay.”

  He nodded and scratched his e-mail address on the slip. “That’s an unusual name,” he said, looking back up at her. “I mean, it’s a beautiful name…. Is it … ?”

  “It’s my nickname. It’s Navajo for older sister.” Ben looked back down at the receipt, felt his throat swell. “You’d really come?” she asked, taking the paper from him. Her eyes were warm and still. Something about her face made him feel calm.

  “Of course,” he said, nodding.

  Along time ago, everything was whole. Ben remembers those times as if they belonged to some other Ben. A distant smiling happy Ben. A flickering black-and-white Super 8 life projected on a sheet suspended in a basement rec room. This was when he had a father and a mother and a sister. When he and Dusty made forts underneath the dining room table and chased fireflies while their parents drank wine out of fragile glasses in the backyard. It was a time of poison ivy and climbing trees. Everything smelled of cut grass and barbeque. Even the bee stings were good then. Even the cuts and bruises and humpbacked crickets and screeching cicadas.

  Then he was eleven and Dusty was six, and in one moment, one sliver of a moment, everything changed. It was October, cold and sunny. The trees were alight in the bright autumn sun. They’d gotten off the bus after school and were walking home, and Ben wasn’t paying attention. He was cracking gum and cracking jokes with Charlie, the only other kid who got off at their stop, and Dusty lagged behind, dragging her ladybug backpack behind her, humming a song she’d learned that day at school. He and Charlie gave each other high fives before Charlie disappeared into his little brick house, and then Ben kept walking with Dusty following behind. Ben was thinking about basketball tryouts. About how to ask for new sneakers. About his math test. About what there might be to eat in the cupboard at home.

  He imagines now that something beautiful caught her eye: a silvery dragonfly, a monarch with painted wings. Maybe just a falling acorn from one of the giant oak trees that lined the street. But that day, he wasn’t paying attention. And so when she darted out into the road and the car sped past them, into her, picking her up and then setting her down like just another autumn leaf on the pavement, he didn’t see anything except a blur disappearing in the distance. It happened so quickly, it was as though it hadn’t happened at all.

  Later, when his father demanded, “You had to have seen something, Ben. Try to remember!” he hadn’t been able to remember anything. Not the color of the car, not the face of the driver, not even the song that Dusty had been singing.

  For a while they tried to believe that someone would be caught. That there would be some sort of explanation, even if it was one they didn’t want to hear. They waited for the driver to come forward, for his conscience to kick in, for the guilt to overwhelm him. They waited for Ben to remember. But Ben hadn’t been paying attention. And Ben couldn’t remember anything. And so hope slowly turned into desperation and desperation into sad resignation.

  That winter, when the trees were stripped of their leaves and their branches looked like blanched and arthritic bones against the sky, they cleaned out her room, and soon it was as if she’d never existed at all. It was also when his mother stopped making them go to church and stopped making pancakes on Saturday mornings and stopped playing her old records on the stereo. Eventually, she stopped speaking to his father. And so his dad left, moved into the city when Ben was fourteen. And then Ben graduated, left home, and his mother got sick. Since then, instead of feeling whole, Ben had felt slivered. His life fractured into before and after. And the chasm between was Dusty.

  He never talked about her. Not even with Sara. There was no way to share that sort of grief with someone who had never known sadness. It would be like trying to explain the color red to a blind man. Trying to describe snow to someone who has never felt cold.

  And so he held on to this secret, kept it folded into tiny squares inside his pocket. Sometimes he could forget it was there, on good days. But when he spoke to Shadi that night at the hospital, it was as though she had found it, unfolded it and smoothed the worn, soft creases. As though she were asking him to share this ragged grief.

  He didn’t know how to tell Sara, how to explain this sudden urgent need to console a stranger. He could never have articulated the feeling that this was somehow serendipitous, that there might be a reason he was the one who found the kid. He knew Sara would never understand, was incapable of comprehending the new sense of purpose that swelled in his chest like a storm.

  And so when Shadi Begay sent an e-mail with the details about the services, Ben lied. He said he was going down to Phoenix with Hippo to look at camper shells for Hippo’s truck, and instead drove two hundred desolate miles to Chinle for the funeral.

  Ben bought his truck as a gift for himself the day he graduated from Georgetown. Little did he know then that the PhD he planned to get would likely never make him enough money to pay the truck off. It was a 1952 Chevy pickup, completely restored, the color of a candy apple. The guy who sold it to him had tears in his eyes as Ben drove away. He and Maude had driven all the way from DC to Flagstaff in this truck, windows rolled down, both of their noses to the wind. Since then, it had seen eight Flagstaff winters, and thousands of miles. He figured he might drive this truck to his grave. If he could, he’d take it with him.

  Now, Ben watched in the rearview mirror as the San Francisco Peaks disappeared behind him. The sun had come out on Tuesday morning and quickly melted the snow from the roads, as it always does in Flagstaff. The snow would remain on the Peaks, though, dappling the ashen gray in white. He yanked his sunglasses from the glove box and put them on, glancing at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He’d been thinking about growing a beard for a couple of weeks now, despite Sara’s obvious lack of enthusiasm. Or, perhaps, because of it. This morning he’d shaved the few prickly whiskers that had sprouted up like spines on a cactus.

  He thought about his kids showing up to his 8:00A.M. class, finding the note he’d written in Sharpie on a piece of notebook paper. It had been too early to have anybody in the History Department do it, so he’d double-parked and run into the building like a bandit, sticking notes on the two classrooms where he taught, Prof Bailey’s US History to 1865 Class Canceled Today: Family Emergency.

  He’d told Sara he was going into his office early to grade papers and that he and Hippo were leaving for Phoenix right after his second class. He promised he’d be home sometime later tonight. He left her still sleeping, getting dressed in the dark. His suit, which he hadn’t worn since he’d had his interview at school, was already in the truck.

  Ben still wasn’t sure why he didn’t just tell Sara he was going to the funeral. He found himself doing this a lot lately, lying about where he was and what he was doing even if he had nothing to hide: telling her he was getting a burrito at Ralberto’s when he was really sitting next door at Crystal Creek with a turkey sub. Saying he was going to meet Hippo for a drink and instead ducking into the movie theater and watching an entire movie alone. Since the engagement, he’d found his actual life and the one he fabricated becoming two entirely different things.

  He glanced down at his cell phone and saw that the reception had already disappeared. He hoped Sara would be too busy today to call him. He hoped she wouldn’t need
him for anything.

  According to the map, Chinle was close to the Canyon de Chelly. For someone who’d made Arizona his home, Ben had done surprisingly little sightseeing. In the eight years he’d been here, he’d been to the Grand Canyon only once. He hadn’t been to Four Corners or Window Rock either. Growing up just outside DC in Maryland, the only reason he’d ever seen the monuments was because of class field trips. He’d spent four years at Georgetown and not once made his way to the National Mall. He hated tourists. He hated the sense that people were ticking off the items on their lists of Things to See, as if their lives suddenly gained meaning when they had their photo snapped in front of some stone memorial. The connection between the monument and what it was meant to memorialize was too often lost. And the bickering families in oversize T-shirts, sweating and frowning and gathering together and smiling for the brief moment it took for a bystander to take their picture before returning to their misery, always made him feel sad.

  It was seven thirty now, and he’d been on the road for over an hour. His ears popped as he descended out of the clouds. Already, he could feel it getting a little warmer outside. He pressed his hand against the window, and the glass no longer held the cold. He rolled down the window and stuck his hand out. Fifty, maybe sixty degrees.

  The funeral was at tenA.M. at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church. Shadi had told him in the e-mail that her brother’s name was Ricky.

  At nine thirty, Ben pulled into town, stopped at a gas station, and changed into his suit in the restroom. He checked his reflection again and barely recognized himself. Normally, he wore T-shirts and jeans year-round, changing only his shoes in response to the weather. He needed a haircut; his dark hair stuck up in several directions. He ran his hand through it, trying to tame it into some sort of submission. He peered in closely at his reflection in the mirror and noted that his eyes looked tired. Flat blue-gray irises under heavy eyelids. He tightened his tie and stepped back.

  As per Shadi’s instructions, he took a right onto Route 7 off the 191. He parked in the church parking lot and began to wonder what on earth he was doing here.

  The parking lot was virtually empty. There was a rusty Lincoln and a couple of trucks. The church looked like an octagonal log cabin. He peered down at the e-mail he had printed out: Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church. This was it.

  He got out of the truck and walked up to the front doors, and just as he was about to open them, the girl emerged.

  “Hi,” she said, grabbed his hand, and pulled him to the side of the building, leaning against the wall and sighing. She was wearing a black dress, her hair pulled away from her face. She smelled like freshly mowed grass."God, I need a cigarette,” she said, and then as she located the pack, she sighed and smiled. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  On Monday night, Ben had asked Hippo if he remembered seeing the kid when he was working that weekend. Hippo was usually in the kitchen, but sometimes he helped out behind the bar if it was busy.

  Hippo was sitting at the bar after his shift, eating a basket of fries and a cheesesteak. “It was Halloween, dude,” he said. “Everybody was dressed up. He could’ve been here, but with everybody in costumes, I don’t know.” Melted cheese dripped down his chin.

  “You got a little …” Ben said, pointing to Hippo’s face.

  Hippo wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and kept eating.

  “There weren’t any fights, then? You didn’t need to kick anybody out?” Ben asked.

  “Nah. Nobody except for Leroy. But we always have to kick Leroy out.”

  Leroy was the old guy who lived upstairs in the apartment above the bar. He was in every night, most nights until closing. When he got too rowdy, they sent him back upstairs. Sometimes, Ben or Hippo would walk up with him, make sure he got into his place okay.

  “So it looked like he got beat up?” Hippo asked.

  “Or run over. He was a mess. Shit,” Ben said, opening up a Bud Light and putting it in front of Hippo. “I can’t get it out of my head.”

  Ben had taken the job at Jack’s to supplement his income at school. But he quickly realized that he could make as much in a month at the bar as he did teaching a class for a whole semester. And he’d made some good friends at Jack’s—both coworkers and patrons.

  Hippo had been working at Jack’s since he dropped out of NAU as an undergrad. He was here for the snow too. In the winter, when he wasn’t working, he was skiing. He operated the chairlift to get a free pass. Contrary to what his name might suggest, Hippo was tall and rail thin with a skinny goatee that he banded together with colored rubber bands. He was tattooed from the neck down. His girlfriend, Emily, owned the tattoo shop south of the tracks on San Francisco.

  “Have the police been in here?” Ben asked, thinking the cops, assuming the kid had been drunk, would probably have interviewed the local barkeeps. He was only nineteen after all.

  “Nah. And I haven’t seen anything about it on the news, either,” Hippo said, dipping a fry into a glob of ketchup.

  Ben had scoured the paper that morning, looking for something, anything. Nothing. He’d watched the local news as well as the Fox station in Phoenix, but there was no mention.

  “I’m going to the services tomorrow,” Ben said. “Up in Chinle.”

  “Jesus,” Hippo said. “You want me to come with?”

  “Nah. But I told Sara you and I were going to Phoenix. So that’s the story, okay?”

  Hippo, his perpetual alibi, shook his head. “You gotta get out of that situation, dude.”

  “Easier said than done,” Ben said, grimacing a little. He wasn’t an asshole, didn’t want to be an asshole, but here he was.

  “What are we doing in Phoenix?” Hippo asked.

  “Looking for a camper shell for your truck.”

  “Cool,” Hippo said, popping the last bite of cheesesteak into his mouth and taking a long pull on his beer. “Gotta go wax my skis. They got twelve inches of fresh powder at Snowbowl. And I’ve got tomorrow off.”

  Outside the church, Shadi pulled a pack of American Spirits out of a small leather purse and shook one loose from the pack. She offered it to Ben, and at first he shook his head. He’d pretty much quit smoking when he and Sara started dating except for every now and then if he was out with Hippo. He’d steal a drag or two, but never around Sara. She was allergic to cigarette smoke and could smell it even a mile away. The few times she’d smelled it on him after a night out, she’d made him leave his clothes outside in a heap on the porch. But Sara was two hundred miles away, and he could use a smoke. His stomach was in knots for some reason. He was still a little worried that Shadi might think he was withholding information about what he saw, about what he knew.

  “Actually, sure … do you mind?” he asked, gesturing to the pack before she crammed it back into her bag.

  “Help yourself,” she said. “Thanks again for coming all the way up here.” She lit her cigarette with a Zippo, which she passed to him. It hissed and lit, the flame leaping into the air before his face.

  “That your truck?” she asked.

  He nodded, took a heavy drag on the cigarette. The rush of nicotine made him feel swimmy. “2019;51?” “2019;52.”

  “Our grandpa had a ‘51. Course it wasn’t restored like yours. Piece of shit, actually. All rusted out, missing the rear bumper. Ricky and I used to like to ride in the back, feel the wind. Taste the air.” She pulled a piece of loose tobacco from between her lips and flicked it onto the dirt. She looked up at Ben, and looked him hard in the eyes. “They’re saying he was drunk. That he passed out, hit his face, and died of exposure. Just another drunk Indian. It’s total bullshit. Goddamn Belaganas.“

  Ben stared at the ground.

  “I knew him,” he said. He should have said something sooner. “Not well. But he came into the bar where I work, to play pool. I never saw him drink anything.”

  Her eyes narrowed then. “Jesus Christ. I told him to stay away from the bars. It’s asking for tro
uble.” She tossed her half-smoked cigarette onto the ground and snubbed it out with the toe of her shoe.

  He did the same.

  “Do you know who did this to him?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t there that night. My friend who was working said he didn’t know whether or not he was there either. Everyone was dressed up for Halloween.”

  The girl took a deep breath and lifted her hair off her neck, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked at Ben, as if gauging whether or not she should trust him.

  “He left the rez, came to Flagstaff, to play music. Guitar. He was in this band. They played the prom at Chinle High. He was really, really good. He thought that he would have more opportunities in Flag.”

  They stood there for another minute or so. Shadi slipped off her shoe and shook out a pebble. “We should go inside,” she said.

  After the funeral, Ben followed behind Shadi and her grandmother in the Lincoln as they left Chinle. The roads became rougher, the dirt thicker. Through the rear window of the Lincoln, he could see the back of Shadi’s head, but her grandmother was small, hidden in the passenger’s seat. The woman had not said a single word to him when Shadi introduced them after the service. She was dressed head to toe in thick purple velvet, weighted down in silver and turquoise necklaces. She had shuffled past him to the car, waving her hand dismissively.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for me to be here?” he had asked Shadi quietly as she helped her grandmother into the car.

  “She didn’t want this,” she said, gesturing to the church. “She wants him to have a traditional burial. Come,” she said. And so he did.

  They turned down so many roads that didn’t even look like roads that he suspected he’d have to ask to follow her back into Chinle afterward. The sky was warm and pink as the Lincoln stopped in front of a single solitary structure that looked as though it had sprung from the ground: her grandmother’s hogan, he suspected.