But he woke the next morning with a feeling of lightness that he could not explain. He threw off the blanket and, leaping to his feet, tried to stamp the life into his stiff limbs. He saw that his father was still sleeping, so he set about gathering some kindling for a fire, just enough to boil water for coffee. It was a risk, but only a slender one; during the night they had climbed high into the hills and they were now shielded by oak trees. He drove two sticks into the earth, balancing a third above the flames. He slung the kettle on this third stick and sat back on his heels.
When the steam began to swirl across the face of the water, he went to wake his father. His father was lying there with his eyes open. He was staring up into the trees. His eyes wide open, like tins to catch the rain for drinking.
‘The coffee’s ready, Pa.’
His father did not answer. He just lay on the ground, still as fallen wood, and did not say a word. Did not even blink.
‘What’s wrong, Pa?’
He had never seen anybody who was dead before, and maybe this was what it looked like. Your eyes were polished till they were clean and so much silence was poured into you, it reached all the way to your fingers.
‘Pa?’
His heart was threatening to jump between his ribs.
And then his father’s lips moved. ‘All I ever dreamed of was to find us some gold.’
His relief converted into faith, the faith his father had instilled in him. ‘There’s plenty more gold in the ground, Pa. It ain’t all used up yet. There’s plenty there.’
‘That’s all I ever dreamed of and all that happens is we end up running from the law.’
He leaned closer, his faith working his tongue for him, lending him the words. Maybe they were running towards the gold, he told his father. Maybe all their running, it was in the right direction. It was just that they didn’t know it.
His father was still lying there, the shape of people when they put them into coffins. A faint smile altered his mouth, but it did not reach his eyes. His eyes were wide and frightened; they had that shine to them, the shine of something final. It was as if he were waiting for six feet of sky to come down and cover him like earth. As if he were so old that there was nothing left for him but that. And yet he seemed young too, no more than a child, and needed to be wrapped in something big like love.
Wilson reached into his pouch of tobacco and rolled another cigarette. He could not recall much else about that morning. He struck a flame on the wall behind him and touched it to the paper. He took the first bloom of smoke into his mouth and back over his throat. It was harsh Indian tobacco, grown in the hard ground. Harsh as memory.
There was one thing, now he thought about it. Something he had said to his father. Something that had been on his mind for weeks.
‘Maybe we should go home, Pa.’
His father’s head turned slowly on his bedroll. ‘What good would that do?’
He could think of some good, actually, but he could not voice it, not with his father bending such a look on him. And just then the water, boiling suddenly, jumped out of the kettle, and he had to snatch it off the fire before it spilled some more.
They walked south, then east, with the trail losing heat behind them. Once they saw a group of horsemen cut out against the light above a ridge, but otherwise the world was theirs. No longer fearing capture and the branding that would surely follow it, they dropped down to the valley floor. On the third evening they felt secure enough to risk another fire. He roasted squirrel over a blaze of wild oak and, for want of any potatoes, baked some pale roots in the ashes. The squirrel tasted like rabbit, a pungent meat, but succulent. They cleaned their palates with some strawberries that he had gathered earlier on the wooded slopes. The next day they walked on, always east. His father did not talk at all, but he would often stop and lift his face, as if the air had spoken to him, as if it had said something that gave him cause to hope. To the north a range of yellow hills unfolded. The weather held, dry and crisp. He asked his father where they were headed, but his father would not say. The mystery walked beside them, always there, unsolved.
They walked for a month. Rising before dawn, sleeping at dusk. Moving all the time, and always in silence. He sang to himself so he did not forget he had a voice — ’Old Zip Coon’ and ‘The Banks of the Mohawk’. They soon left the yellow hills behind. The earth altered beneath their feet. Though September must have been over, the air grew dry and hot. They crossed parched valleys, dried-up riverbeds; they climbed through fields of sharp red rock. They were finding no fresh water now. His father taught him how to create water where none existed. You cut the top off a barrel cactus and then dug a hole inside, about the size of a quart bottle. Then you gathered brush and built a fire around the base. In a few moments sap would collect in the hollow place that you had made. Only two cupfuls, and bitter, but drinkable — and it could save your life. Again he asked his father where they were headed; again his father acted deaf. He could almost see the mystery, walking just ahead of them. It seemed to be leading the way. It was as real as his father, and no less inscrutable.
And then, one afternoon, they came over a stretch of barren ground, a few red rocks, some wiry grass, and there, opening in front of him, was a chasm that was wider and deeper than his eyes could understand, a great gap in the world. He stepped back, dizzy.
‘The Grand Canyon.’
His father stood with his hands in his pockets and his toes close to the precipice.
‘People say the devil got mad and tried to cut the world in two.’ His father turned to him. ‘Would you rather be home now?’
He could only gasp. ‘No.’ All the doubts were chased out of his head by the red-and-violet splendour of the place. All the words too. All the thoughts.
Later they climbed down to where the river, pale-green and lazy, coiled along the canyon floor. He stood on the bank, his shoulder touching his father’s rolled-up shirt-sleeve. His father stared at the water with such defiance, it might have been the source of all his misfortune. But his voice, when he spoke, was gentle.
‘Now this is something to remember,’ he said. ‘This place, us being here — that’s something to remember. But not the rest of it.’ His face opened; he hazarded a smile. ‘At least I showed you something.’
His father had kept the secret for weeks — a child’s desire to surprise him, a deep need to get something right at last.
Standing at his father’s shoulder that afternoon, he was filled with equal measures of happiness and sorrow. When he saw the Grand Canyon again, years later, he could not find the place where they had stood, and yet the same feeling rose in him, a pull in two directions, a spirit divided against itself.
‘Hey! American!’
He came back slowly from the past and peered down between the splintered staves that formed the railing to his balcony. Standing on the street below was the Bony One. He shifted on his chair, preparing to withdraw deep into his room.
‘I’m sorry if I laid into you the other night,’ she called up. ‘I was feeling lousy. I had to take it out on someone.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said.
‘I just want to apologise. I was pretty hard on you.’
‘Forget it.’ Smiling, Wilson leaned against the wall.