“Pride,” the woman said softly, and although she didn’t say more, Ammalie knew her to mean that they had pride in the area, and that Ammalie should too. “For six or seven generations, the pueblos here existed without Spanish influence,” the woman said. “Which is why the language and customs in this Colorado–New Mexico area are so different than the rest of the Spanish-speaking world.”
“I’m the tenth generation. That’s pretty amazing, actually.” The kid raised his eyebrows at her, as if to see if she’d challenge him on the point.
“I think that’s beautiful, that history. I wish I knew more about this area. I have so much to learn…” Ammalie suddenly felt shy and out of practice, unable to converse.
The man was staring at Lady, who was trotting around everyone’s legs, occasionally whacking them with a stick she clasped in her mouth. Then he tilted his head to the bright blue morning sky. “It’s one of the last warm days we’ll have for a while,” he said. “Here comes the winter of discontent. People are always more trouble in the winter. My life is about to get more complicated.”
The kid laughed. “He’d know,” he said to Ammalie. “He’s the mayor of this town.”
Ammalie wished the man would stop looking at Lady—either because he might recognize her or might ask questions about the injuries—and now he was reaching down to pet Lady’s head. She tried to distract him with a question. “What does that involve? Being mayor, I mean?”
The man snorted. “It’s unpaid volunteer work and mainly consists of doing miserable things like dealing with wastewater.”
Ammalie was surprised. Did mayors of small towns really not get paid? Were things in this country still so…unofficial? But what she said was, “That’s what you’re doing today?”
“No, no wastewater today. Today, I’m walking out my annoyance. Today, I was contacted by a gentleman whose granddaughter was dating a guy who broke parole. When the police chased him, he ran into the gentleman’s house. The police knocked and there was no answer, and the door was locked, so they knocked it down. Now the grandfather wants eight hundred bucks for a new door. While I understand his desire to have a new door, I understand that my community does not have the funds to pay for a door. Such funds will come out of budget for a new playground, and, after all, the parole-breaking is not the town’s fault. And so it makes me sad. So I came out here for a walk with my amigos here.”
“He comes here,” the woman said, “because if he walks in town, everyone stops to ask him something.”
“Everyone needs some peace,” Ammalie said. “That’s why I’m here too.”
“May you find it,” the man said. His eyes were on the dog in such a way that she suspected now that he recognized her.
“I better go,” she stammered.
The man gazed down the river. “These mountains, they’re made of volcanoes. Not the same as the Rockies right over there; those are uplifts. This is a very special place, if you know what to look for, and there are hot springs along the river. You just have to know what you’re seeing, otherwise you’re hardly seeing anything at all.” His eyes met hers. “It’s a good dog you have here. Go in peace, amiga.”
His gentle voice wishing such a thing—such a simple, true thing—and offered in such a sincere way made her breath catch. He knew something about the dog, and he was signaling his approval. She waved goodbye and kept walking, Lady trotting on beside her.
Though she kept her eyes on the rock walls, growing in height and making her feel smaller, she didn’t see any petroglyphs. She walked for a long time, eventually turning back to her car, feeling disappointed. But maybe not finding them was for the best; she didn’t feel worthy or in the right place emotionally to see and appreciate such a thing. She didn’t know enough about the Native peoples—Southern Utes or Taos Puebloans? She didn’t even know!—to have the honor of seeing their art. She needed to learn more. That was part of an adventure, after all. And for now, the dusting of snow and the river and the blue sky and the sunshine were pleasure enough.
Before she left town, she left eight hundred-dollar bills—half the cash she had—in an envelope at the post office with the clerk with a note that said, FOR THE MAYOR, FOR THE DOOR, EVERYONE NEEDS A DOOR. She also hoped it would serve as a bribe or thank-you of some sort—to leave her and Lady alone. It’s possible, for example, that he had taken down her license plate.
She kept thinking of his voice. He had wished for her to go in peace with such sincerity. It did seem like grace. Like a prayer. As if he acknowledged the world was hard, and that he was worn out by it himself, but also that in doing the right things, peace could in fact be found.
—
Vincent had died in the month of April. It had been sudden: Powell had just come home for spring break and informed them he was dropping out of college, that it was all too much for him, and that, furthermore, he loved them and all but he didn’t want to move back home, he was renting a house with three other guys.
That night’s dinner had been awkward; they were all angry, each for their own reasons. Powell sullen for meeting with resistance. Vincent furious about the wasted college money and lack of discipline. And she was angry at the weariness that kept plaguing her, which Vincent’s anger contributed to, and which, in turn, made her angry at him. It seemed with each passing year, she was just getting more and more tired—and she couldn’t tell if it was normal body aging or if it was something more psychological or emotional in nature.
That night, she and Vincent had been arguing. Or perhaps not arguing but working through something little, something about the house, although underneath that small argument were all their old and nebulous and much larger battles…he being in the basement all the time, either for work or hobbies, she being annoying (or at least he made her feel that way, as if her very presence on earth was interrupting him). Vincent reached up and touched his head. He’d had a headache for a week, but then he said, “I’m not feeling so great,” and then said it again but it was slurry, as if he was drunk. At the same time, she was struck with a hot flash—they had just started—and was focusing on the sensations of that, confused and miserable.
Then Vincent murmured something like I don’t feel so great again and then he spoke something else, a blur of a noise, and he was looking down at his right hand. She helped him into a chair and said, “Let me get you some water,” and she got him a glass of water, and then she stood above him, not moving quickly at all, being so slow, and it had taken her a long time to connect the dots. Then his face looked weird, and his left hand was moving but his right arm looked limp, and that was when she called 911.
She yelled for Powell.
She yelled for Vincent to stay.
Then he said something, and she couldn’t be sure but she thought it was, My head got torn.
So, life ended.
It. just. ended.
It ended with: I don’t feel so great. My head got torn.
She had taken so long to react. She had been the slow one.
As she drove on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which he’d always wanted to see, her eyes smarted with tears as she wondered yet again about Vincent’s last breath. She hadn’t seen it, of course—he was at the hospital. She wished he had died from a different cause, one with his brain still working, so he could have left her a note or a word. But no, a stroke—he’d not been conscious when he’d died—and perhaps he had really died as he sat in their living room.
She tried to remember the exact last breath she had seen. Having called 911 and now on her knees in front of him, saying, They’re coming, help is coming, it’s going to be okay, help is coming, and then running to unlock the door for the paramedics, and then back to him, and then Powell there, saying, Dad? Dad? Dad? and both of them kneeling near him, and then the paramedics were moving him to the stretcher, moving the board out the door. Gone. Everything changed so quickly and she and Powell just stood there, stunned and stupid in the silence.
She felt the Sea Creature zing down her spine, causing her to shudder. A horrible memory—though not remembering felt like a cop-out, like cowardice. So she thought of his last breath. She thought of first aid kits. She thought of snow fences. Of crosses alongside the road. She thought of mojoneras. She thought of water. She hoped he had found peace. Died in peace. She thought of all the ways humans endeavored to find peace and what a worthy and noble journey that was.
—
The ragged taxidermy on the walls at the café in Taos shouted Creepy death! but the green chili shouted Fucking alive! She sat outside, bundled up and warm enough in the sun, her nostrils flaring with spice. Apricot simply had to be called. Of the three keys in her life, this one was the most rusty and needed to be jiggled in the lock of communication.
But honestly, how painful. The conversation was as it always was: boring chitchat about neighbors and the weather and Apricot’s recent purchases, which included a chair that massaged your back and had an internal heater, simply amazing. When she realized that Apricot wasn’t even going to mention the cancer, Ammalie brought it up, but Apricot’s impatience was clear. “I told you, Ammalie. It’s like the safest kind of leukemia you can have. It’s a super-slow progression and I’ll likely die of something else before it gets bad enough to treat. Sometimes I feel like I have the flu, that’s it!”
Apricot’s voice was so snotty that Ammalie didn’t even bother to mention any details of her trip. Something bitter in her was fed by keeping her own secrets. Perhaps it was anger, perhaps annoyance, but it all came down to the fact that Apricot had quit trying to communicate for real long ago. Ammalie didn’t have the energy now to fix the problem. But even as she hung up, she knew that somewhere deep inside was still the five-year-old her holding her older sister’s hand, and the two of them caught in fits of laughing, and how they’d skip through the neighborhood, which was just being built, and they’d sneak into half-finished houses to draw with chalk on plywood or play games of hide-and-seek. Entering those homes had seemed so natural; perhaps that’s where she’d gotten this current idea.
She had to admit that sometimes, memories were enough of a key to your heart. The key might be rusty and unused, but it still opened a lock. Or had the potential to.
After quick texts to Mari and Powell, both of whom were at work and couldn’t take a call, she sent them photos of the huge Rio Grande rift she’d just visited. Before leaving, she went to the restroom, and as she peed she stared at the license plates decorating the walls. Thank god there wasn’t taxidermy in the bathroom—now, that would be a horror movie. But the plates were interesting—a mishmash of colors and states and logos. Some new, some old. She tilted her head and considered the various colors and styles. And then she dug her multipurpose tool out of her backpack. Her hands simply did it. Took a New Mexico plate off the wall.
She stared down at it and considered. It was stealing, sure, but there had been two calls from an “unidentified” number on her phone, no message, and probably scams, spams, swindles, flimflam, which was her word of the day. But still, it made her suspicious. Could be that the dog owner had tracked her down. Or the homeowner. Or the guy in the van she’d passed. She wasn’t dumb: Any police officer who ran a plate would see this one for the fraud it was. But on the other hand, if someone was looking for an Illinois plate, and, well, they saw New Mexico instead…a New Mexico plate with new tags, surely that would help?
