On exiting the Escape, Maya was buoyed a little by the dry, sweet, grassy air. Where was the grass? She could see only puckered gray stone — she thought of small elephants. The day was enjoying its best heat at this elevation at this time of year; Maya turned her face up and closed her eyes, letting the light wind whip her hair. Now it carried the sound of rustling grass, and again she looked around, as if she had heard speech in an empty room. Perhaps neither humbleness of imagination nor low funds were responsible for the bare facilities; perhaps they were meant to accentuate the views that lay open in every direction. The terrain looked like a cardiogram — the stone was beating healthy and sound. She remembered her husband and son; they were off to the side of the small dirt parking lot, waiting for her. She called out to Alex to set up the tent while she and Max registered. “Which one?” Alex said, pointing at the numbered campsites. “Any one,” she said and, after Max joined her, went into the office.
Something had expired and then expired again in the low-ceilinged front room of the shed. Behind the wood partition, a red-faced man in a check shirt and suspenders was clutching a telephone and listening loudly to the senselessness on the other end of the line. Maya had been enlarged by the landscape, he by elk sausage in gravy: mother and child could fit inside of him twice. A moth the size of Maya’s fist banged around a desk lamp, on despite the blasted severity of the light outside. Other insects had tattered the lampshade into a rag that barely held on to the harp.
“Well, Carla, your piss don’t smell like gingersnaps, either,” he yelled and slammed down the phone. Its tinnitic echo rang through the stale air of the office. Maya smelled gasoline, dried meat, wet straw. The attendant flexed a pair of porcine ears. A nameplate identified him as Wilfred Shade. “How can I help you?” he sighed. He held up a palm the size of Maya’s head.“I’m sorry, little fellow. Pardon my language.”
“Is piss the same as pee?” Max said.
The adults smiled. “We’re not laughing at you, honey,” Maya said. “Come here.”
“There’s two ways of saying things,” Wilfred Shade said. “After you walk out of here, you could say: ‘Mr. Shade, he was big.’ Or: ‘Mr. Shade’s fat.’ What would you say?”
Max looked up at his mother. “We would call Mr. Shade big, honey,” Maya said.
“Your mom is nice, see,” Wilfred said. He pushed a paper at Maya. “Fill this out.” He retreated into the back office, but a moment later, his big head emerged. “You want an Oreo, either of you?” he said.
“Here is the one boy in the world who doesn’t like sweets,” Maya said.
“You and I part ways there,” Wilfred said, and disappeared. Then his head popped out again. “I’ve got graham crackers. Dieter’s delight.”
Maya smiled wanly and thanked him, and now the attendant vanished for good.
“Max?” Maya looked down at her son. “Are you all right? You haven’t said much. Did something upset you?”
“Why did you cry?”
“When?”
“You went around the car and cried.”
“No, no. I had something in my eye. And then the sun here is so strong. I started tearing up. But I’m fine, honey — fine. Look at me — I’m laughing.”
“Why did we come here?” he said.
“We’re on vacation, sweetheart. You’ve never really been on vacation with your mama.”
“If we’re on vacation, why are you crying?”
Maya heard the television go on in the back office. Through the doorway, Wilfred was breathing heavily into a half-bitten Oreo. Was he trying to give her privacy? But she did not care about being overheard. As if feeling her stare on him, Wilfred turned back to look at her. “What I do,” he said, “is I bite and then count. To twenty-five, and sometimes to fifty, if I can manage it. This way I eat five instead of the whole pack.”
“You look great,” Maya said.
“Ho-ho-ho,” Wilfred said, and turned back to the television.
Maya crouched in front of her son.“Do you know what, Maxie? It’s okay to cry sometimes. Good, actually. We’ve got laughs inside us, but cries, too. And they both have to come out. Sometimes, they come out at the wrong moments. They don’t listen like that.”
“It’s strange to miss school.”
“I have the one son who doesn’t like Oreos but likes school.”
Max shrugged and puffed out his mouth.
“I love this about you,” she said. “Do you know that? I do. I don’t want you to be any other way.”
“I believe you.” Max nodded.
“We’re going to see how Papa is doing with the tent, and then we’ll go take a walk. It’s beautiful here, don’t you think?”
Max shrugged.
“You don’t think so? Aren’t you excited you’ll have a tent to sleep in again? I made Papa do it so you would be happy.”
“The ground is hard,” he said. “It’s softer at home on the lawn.”
“Just give it a shot — please. I’ve been looking forward to being away with you for so long. Just me, you, and Papa. We love Grandma and Grandpa, but just us three this one time.”
“Okay,” Max said. “I will.”
Maya and Max returned outdoors to find husband and father lost in the embrace of a giant tent that billowed in the strong wind like the sail of a boat. No sooner would Alex slide a stake through one side of the piping than the opposite would shoot out into the next camping plot over, where, luckily, there was no one to impale. Maya and Max walked over. Alex asked why Maya had bought a tent when they already had one, Max’s. If it was a purchase in error, why couldn’t it, at least, be a good one? She had bought not a tent but a barracks for a small army. The same army was needed to mount it. Alex’s monologue was halted by the arrival of a strong gust of wind. The bottom edge of the tent furled up, Alex lost his footing, and Maya and Max were soon gazing on him plastered across the hardpan, arms and legs splayed. It was only the weight of Alex’s fallen self that kept the tent from flying off with the wind.
Max moved off toward a post with a coil of rope tied around it. One decorated the edge of every campsite — it was the border. Max unwound the rope, looping one end over the post and the other through an opening at the crown of the tent. This gave the operation the traction it needed. Maya and Alex watched their son move around the tent, staking poles into the hardpan, which, now shimmied properly, held the poles with unvarying force. Finally, it was impossible to continue without Alex giving up his position, and he crawled off the tent. Muttering, he walked off to wash his hands. Indeed, Maya had made an error — the tent was much too big for three. But it was beautiful, too, warlike and protective at once, a dryland ship awaiting assignment.
+
“Call me Rose, call me Ranger Rose, call me Ranger Holliver. But don’t call me ‘lady,’ don’t call me ‘yo,’ and no ‘hey there’s, okay? Mom Holliver did not sit with a name-omen book for three days for no reason.” The retirees filling out the noon naturalist walk chuckled. Maya gripped Max’s hand. Alex had insisted they go alone. He would spend time with the map, designing the shortest route to Adelaide, Montana. Maya felt a wave of futility. On a weekday in late October, when the adult world was at work, she was in an arid moonscape with a child and ten old people in the downswing of their lives. She felt at once undeservedly idle and frantic to no purpose.