This Glittering World (22 page)

T
he forest was quiet and cold, but by the time he pulled into the RV park, Ben was sweating. His heart was pounding in his ears and in his chest. He gripped the wheel tightly and drove slowly down the twisty dirt road, savoring the wild anticipation of it all. He couldn’t keep from smiling, his jaw and cheeks burning with the effort. He loved every drop of perspiration, every kerplunk of his heart. It was dark in the forest, with only the dim porch lights of the other RVs. His headlights made bright narrow beams on the road, illuminating nothing but trees.

At first he thought he’d turned into the wrong drive. It didn’t make sense. The pastel pink RV next to Shadi’s was there, pink flamingos knee-deep in the snow, the corrugated tin awning threatening to snap under the weight of so much snow. The giant pine with the address nailed to it was there, but the Airstream was gone. The lot was empty. There was just the empty space where she used to live and the drive-in speaker, a chrome monument half buried in the snow.

He pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, feeling the blood rushing to his face in a hot flood. He sat back up, hitting the wheel with his palms until it felt as though the heels of his hands were bruised.

The sky looked like an overripe plum, and the snow swirled about the truck listlessly, indecisive. He rolled down the window and let the cold air rush in. Then he got out of the truck and walked to the place where the trailer used to be.

“You lookin’ for that girl?” a voice said.

He turned around, startled, and squinted into the light shining in the doorway of Shadi’s neighbor’s trailer.

“Hello?” he said.

The old woman hobbled down the steps and walked toward Ben.

“It’s just awful what they did,” she said. She shook her head, shuffled toward him.

He felt his entire body go numb. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a hate crime, pure and simple. That’s what Nancy Grace would call it.”

“What happened?” he asked. “Where is she?”

Ben imagined all of the awful things that could have happened to her. He could feel bile rising into his throat, the wedding champagne burning his esophagus.

“Where is she?” Ben said loudly.

“Don’t know exactly, but after what they did to her trailer, she had somebody with a big truck come down and tow it away. Sweet girl like that. They had no right. She wasn’t hurtin’ nobody.”

“Please,” Ben said, his whole body pulsating with fear and anger. “Do you know where she went? Did she say where she was going? Did she mention Chinle?”

The woman shrugged. “Don’t know. But I bet she won’t be comin’ back here. Damn shame,” she said and started walking back to her trailer.

Ben got into his truck and slammed the door shut. If she’d gone to Chinle, he would have to find her. And if she’d gone somewhere else, he’d go there. He knew as he raced out of the forest and into the storm, he’d drive wherever he needed to see her again.

He got gas in town, filling the tank and getting a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a map with a list of Arizona campsites inside the neon food mart. The coffee was so hot it burned his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Shit,” he said, spitting out his first swallow. It steamed on the pavement. He unfolded the map and looked for campsites and RV parks in Chinle. It looked like there were a couple of campsites, both at Canyon de Chelly. Unless she’d taken the Airstream to her grandmother’s land, he figured this is where she would be. He got in the truck and it roared to life. Mick Jagger crooned, the guitar twanged its bluesy blues, and Ben set out to find her.

Ben used to love to drive at night. It made him think of the times when he and Dusty were little, and his family would drive down to Florida to visit his grandmother, who lived in West Palm Beach with her three sisters. They always left just before bedtime, he and Dusty putting on their pajamas and then piling into the car, which was already packed.

Dusty usually fell asleep within a few minutes when the general excitement of the impending journey wore off and the engine lulled her to sleep, but Ben stayed wide awake. He loved the feeling of hurtling through the starry darkness, the quiet sound of Dusty sleeping. The sweet smell of his mother’s perfume captured inside the car. His father’s arm stretched across the back of her seat, absently playing with her hair. He almost always fell asleep to the sound of the radio broadcasting whatever station would come in clearly, and, when reception was bad, the static hum of the spaces in between the channels. And by the time the sun came up, and he and Dusty woke up, they’d be in Florida. They would stop at a roadside stand for oranges for breakfast, and sleepily peel them at the side of the road, the juice running down their hands.

Tonight, despite every impulse to rush forward, he drove slowly. The snow was hypnotic. Ben could feel his eyes growing heavy as he concentrated on the storm in front of him. When his eyes closed for a few seconds, he turned off the heat and rolled down the window. Turned up the stereo and shook his head. There were no other cars on the road.

Finally, the snow began to lessen and the caffeine kicked in. Now he just wanted to get there. To Shadi. Jesus Christ, what had they done to her?

He pulled into the Spider Rock Campground at around nine o’clock, the bright yellow sign at the entrance boasting solar-heated showers and mocha espresso. Ben stopped at the camp office and spoke with the owner of the campground, who offered to arrange for a tour of the canyon in the morning as well as wireless access. Ben said, “Please, I’m just looking for my friend.” The man looked suspicious.

“She’s from here, from Chinle, but I know her from Flagstaff,” he said. “She’s got an old Airstream?”

The man smiled. “Only one person staying here tonight. You tell me her name, and I’ll show you to her site.”

“Shadi Begay,” Ben said. The magic words.

The man slapped him on the back, grabbed a pencil from his back pocket, and scratched a map of the campsite on a napkin.

Ben drove along the bumpy path; it was barren land spotted with scrub foliage and a few trees. When he saw the Airstream in the distance, his heart hammered inside his ribs.

It was dark, but as he pulled into the drive, his headlights illuminated the trailer. Ben caught his breath. In white paint across the side of the Airstream, someone had scrawled
DIRTY SQUAW PUSSY
in giant letters. The door had been dented, one of the windows smashed. There was cardboard and plastic duct-taped over the hole.

Shadi came outside of the trailer, wearing a flannel robe and boots. Her hair spilled over her shoulders like ink. The smoke from her cigarette curled up into the bruised sky.

Ben got out of the truck and walked quickly to her.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was flat.

“I went to find you, in Flagstaff, but you were gone,” Ben said. “I was worried. And then your neighbor told me that something happened. What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

He reached his hand out and took hers. Her skin was warm and so soft it felt almost liquid. He squeezed her hand.

“Were you home?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I was at the studio at school.”

“Thank God.”

“They would have killed me, Ben.”

Ben rubbed his temples. The idea that someone had gone to her home, had hoped she’d be there, was almost more than he could fathom.

“You should go,” Shadi said, flicking her cigarette ash to the ground. “I don’t need any more trouble. Nobody’s going to come for me here, unless they’re following you.”

“Listen,” he said, squeezing her hand, smiling. Anxious. “I talked to someone, a girl who was there that night, at the party. She saw what happened. And she’s going to go to the police.”

Shadi let go of his hand and folded one arm across her chest. She took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled. “How do you know she’ll really go?”

“I just do,” he said. It was taking everything he had not to touch her. “I trust her.”

She flicked her cigarette to the ground and stomped it out.

“Why are you here, Ben?”

“I just told you,” Ben said. “I went to find you, and you were gone. This is what we needed, Shadi, someone to come forward. Someone the police would listen to. She has a friend who was there too. This will happen.”

Shadi looked up at the sky; the moon was bright. She closed the screen door of the trailer. “You want to go for a walk?” she asked. “There’s an overlook not too far from here. You can see down into the canyon.”

He nodded, and she led the way.

They watched the moon set over the canyon, the rocks below them glowing in the waning light. He told her what he knew now, about what happened that night.

“Ricky was so afraid of Spider Woman,” she said. “He really believed that if he was bad, his bones would wind up on her tower in the canyon with the rest of the naughty children’s. So he never made a fuss. Not even when he was provoked. When Daddy was still around, he’d get drunk and egg Ricky on, try to get him to fight back. But he wouldn’t do it. Daddy called him a pussy. Said someday somebody would beat the shit out of him and he’d deserve it.”

“Jesus,” Ben said.

They stood together until there was nothing but darkness beneath them, until they couldn’t even see their own hands anymore.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Ben felt his body fill, expand. He could have floated up above the canyon, a hot air balloon rising over the rocky spires.

Silently they made their way back to the trailer, stumbling awkwardly over the unfamiliar terrain. By the time they got to the Airstream, they were both breathless, their legs and arms scratched from the brush.

“You can come in,” Shadi said.

Ben nodded and followed her up the steps into the trailer. She lit a kerosene lamp, and the inside of the trailer was illuminated in soft light.

“You don’t listen,” Shadi said. “No matter what I say.”

Ben shook his head. “I tried,” he said. And he felt tears welling up in his eyes. “I really did.”

Ben thought about Sara at home, imagined her asleep in the wide expanse of their bed. He thought about the swell of her belly, the way her eyes fluttered in sleep, her brow furrowed into a scowl. He thought about how he had disappointed her. About how many times he had failed her. His leaving her might actually set her free. Even if she hated him. Even if she never spoke to him again. Even if it meant he would never know his daughter. His
daughter.

He looked at the corner where her loom usually was. It was empty now.

“What happened to your loom?”

“They built a campfire with it, right outside my trailer.”

“No,” he said. “Christ.”

Shadi blew warm air into her hands. “Brr. It’s cold.”

“Did you at least finish the blanket you were working on?” he asked. “They didn’t destroy that too?”

Shadi shook her head. She stood up and went to a cupboard underneath the built-in sofa. She pulled out the blanket, unfolding it. She laid it across the tabletop, gently traced the patterns with her long fingers.

“May I?” he asked, and she nodded.

He touched the sunset colors, could almost feel their warmth, despite the chill inside the trailer.

She sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. “I started making it for Ricky. For his new apartment.”

He touched the woven colors, the descending sun. “What is this?” he asked, touching a lone strand that hung loose from the rest of the blanket.

“It’s called the
spirit thread,”
she said. “The Diné believe that when you make a rug or a blanket, a part of your spirit or soul becomes trapped inside. The spirit thread allows the soul a way to escape.”

He touched the string, thought about escape. About freedom.

“I want you to have it,” she said.

He shook his head.

“Please,” she said. “It’s the least I can do. For all you’ve done.”

How could she not know what she had done for him already? How could she not know that she was the only thing he thought about, the only thing that mattered, the one true thing in his life now that everything else was gone?

And then a hot current ran through his body, and he was moving toward her, touching her face with his hands, running his thumbs across her cheekbones. Tracing the line of her jaw. He could feel that fluid skin, and he just wanted to sink into her like a warm pool of water.

She closed her eyes, nodding, and he turned the key on the kerosene lamp. It was as though they had been swallowed into the belly of an animal, it was so dark. He reached for her and tore at the flannel robe, at the soft cotton nightgown she wore underneath. He dropped to his knees and yanked at her boots, feeling the scratch of her wool socks on his face. He kissed her foot, her calf, tasting the tendons, tracing the muscles with his tongue. Her body trembled, her hands clawed at his back.

She stood up and they moved together toward the bed at the back of the trailer. She pressed her hand against his chest, pushing him away, but then leaned her ear against it. The feel of her cheek against his bare skin was almost more than he could bear.

He slipped her nightgown over her head, the cotton as soft as her skin but with none of that crazy warmth.

“I need to tell you something,” she whispered, her lips grazing his earlobe.

“What?” he asked, touching his tongue to her neck, tasting the bitter musk of the absinthe oil she wore.

She was breathless, her entire body quivering. “I didn’t come here because of Ricky, because I was afraid of those boys. Those men. Whoever did this.”

He inhaled the smell of her. The oil, her skin. His eyes burned.

“What do you mean?”

She touched his face. “I came here because of you,” she said quietly.

“I don’t understand.” He felt like he’d been running; he couldn’t catch his breath.

“I need you to promise me something,” she said.

It was so dark he couldn’t see her. He reached for her face and felt cool tears on her cheeks.

“Anything,” he said, burying his face in her neck again, in her hair."Anything you want.”