LOOKING AT THE RIVER, Shelly pictured a dotted line running down its middle.
“It’s weird,” she said, “that that’s another country over there, only a few feet away, that we can see it, can walk to it—”
“But we can’t,” Josh said. “That’s just it.” He looked over to the canyon, up the hill behind them. “I bet there’s a border agent up there somewhere, talking with the ones in the lot. You go over that river, you can’t cross back, not unless you go a hundred miles either way to a border crossing.”
She didn’t mean she wanted to go over; she was just talking. “I’m only saying it’s stupid. It’s just right there.” She looked at the brown river. It wasn’t deep — a few feet at most. “It’s nothing. I could run there and back in two seconds.”
Across the river the reeds were green, like the ones on their side, and a burro was nosing behind a tall bush, which seemed too clichéd to be true, the burro, but there it was. The four men were still under their stick shelter, and Victor was still watching the hill for the next tourists.
“I’m just saying it’s dumb, is all.”
Josh ignored her, and they walked the last few yards toward the canyon without speaking. The trail ended where a giant mound of sand spilled from the canyon’s wall. Past this the river bank turned in, closed against the cliffs, and you couldn’t go any farther. They stood there, at the bank, peering at the canyon rising above them in a tight V of red and tan stone. Beneath the usual rote fascination, Shelly felt a sudden prickle of sadness. Someday she and everything around her would lie pressed under another layer of rock, that’s what the canyon said to her.
Shelly looked again at Josh. “Come on, let’s do it,” she said, taking Josh’s hand. “Just run there and back. No one’s here except Singing Victor and his cronies.” She nodded toward the shelter.
“Why?” Josh said, pulling his hand free. “What does that prove?”
“Nothing. Just how stupid everything is, I guess.”
“I don’t want to end up in Mexican prison.”
“God, don’t be this way. Come on. We just go there and back, together.”
“But those guys,” Josh said, looking at the shelter. “I bet they’re waiting for that. They’ll kidnap us or rob us or something.”
“No they won’t,” Shelly said. “That’s stupid. Please, it’ll be like our renewal.”
“Renewal,” Josh said.
She took his hand and tried to pull him with her, but he slipped out of her grasp, and she was off, dashing across the river, the water splashing up to her knees, and then she was on the other side. She turned and looked back at Josh, standing there, mopey, and then she looked at the canyon wall, then over at the green river reeds the trail had cut through. It was strange, now, looking at her own country across the way. She looked at Victor, who was looking at her, then turned back to face Josh. Her legs were damp. The wind coming from the canyon made them feel cool. Nothing had happened. Maybe people did this every day.
“Come on!” she shouted over the river’s muddy purling, but Josh just stood there.
SHELLY’S FATHER, a preacher, had given up the ministry some years back. He worked at a kiosk in a Dallas mall hustling cell phones, and lived in an upstairs apartment off the freeway. Shelly’s mother had left five years before, settling in Phoenix with a chiropractor and calling Shelly every few months or so to make sure she was still alive — that’s what she actually said, laughing her new dry desert laugh. Their marriage had always been one of silence, kept in place for the benefit of the small congregation of Highpoint Baptist, which occupied a metal-sided building between a bank branch and a gas station. Shelly feared that her parents’ marriage, which had crumbled so soon after her wedding, would somehow corrupt her own, and that first year she had wept often into Josh’s lap, hugging him tight and saying, “Don’t leave me, I’ll never leave you, please don’t leave me.” She was so scared then that someday he would, or she would. It seemed to be the natural order of things.
But Josh, Shelly soon saw, never worried, even with her holding close to him and crying in his lap. He was so caught up with the idea of himself, he seemed unable even to consider the fact that any distance could grow between them, no matter how much he pushed and pushed. True, he could be sweet and loving, but once, when she told him about how she wanted a big yard where she’d grow vegetables and raise chickens, he laughed and said, “You have such small dreams.” She felt the hurt for months. Still, she thought, maybe he was right. Lately he’d been spending his spare time in the bedroom they’d made into his study, determined to find the investment that would make them rich. He had a stack of prospectuses from Brazilian and Philippine companies, the cheap ink on their onionskin pages staining his fingers.
A couple nights before they left for West Texas, Josh cornered Shelly in the apartment’s kitchen and heatedly related his new plan: they would cash out her retirement fund (it was just sitting there now she’d been laid off, he said) and put it in a Philippine mining company he’d found. She knew nothing would come of it. Before his investing phase, he’d taken art classes at night and ended up with two drawings in a show at the community center in Grapevine. For a month after the show he’d talked of moving to the Virgin Islands, where he’d paint while she taught, and then the art phase had fizzled. But what struck her as she stood in the kitchen, cradling a mug of coffee while he gesticulated, was that his plans never allowed much room for her beyond ponying up money or holding the day job. She’d never realized that before — and she wasn’t asking for much, after all, only a yard and chickens. It was then, leaning against the refrigerator as she sipped her coffee, pretending to listen as Josh talked about manganese, that she first imagined life on her own, held that possibility against the vision of the path with the sun behind it. The path seemed less inviting now.
Standing in the kitchen, Josh had been looking at her, waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t heard. She put away her meandering thoughts and asked him to repeat what he’d said. Because this too she’d learned from her parents’ marriage: that you can make a mistake and not know it for years and years. And even more terrifying, never learn what the mistake was, just feel its misery coming down on you for the remainder of your life. Sometimes her father claimed that marrying her mother was the mistake, other times it was letting her go. Mostly they didn’t discuss it.
SHELLY WALKED OVER TO THE BURRO. The animal was nosing at the roots of a small tree, pulling up bits of grass. When she got close, it huffed and trotted away a few feet. Victor and the other men weren’t paying attention to her now — Victor was watching the trail with his binoculars.
“Come back!” Josh shouted over the river. He was flapping his hand, motioning for her to cross. At first she thought he was only embarrassed, but now she saw he was scared. “Please.”
Then Victor started singing again. More people were coming down the trail. Fine, she thought, and crashed through the water once more, the river silky and cool, the current pushing her a little as she crossed to her husband’s side. It was as simple as she’d said.
No one had leapt out at her, no sharpshooter hidden in the canyon face had fired. Josh hugged her, more tightly than usual, but her clasp was weaker, and she pulled away first.
“What’s the big deal?” she said. Victor was still singing, and, over Josh’s shoulder, she could see the passel of tourists coming down the hill, a fat man in a floppy hat at their head.
AFTER THE HIKE they drove over to the camp store, where Josh waited while Shelly took a pay-shower. The water was good and hot, and when she finished she dried herself with one of the towels they’d brought. She dressed and then went outside and sat under the metal awning, her hair still wet. She thought about the big lawn, the chickens running underfoot as she went to her tomato plants, basket in hand. Last week a friend from college had told her about an opening at her school in Waxahachie.