He searched the broad expanse of the mesa to his left hoping there was cover for him to dart into, but the space was wide open, with only a few juniper trees dispersed at random. There was nowhere for him to hide. It would all be over soon. The realization that he would take a bullet in the back was replaced by the sight of the edge of the mesa coming up toward him rapidly.
He wouldn’t die from a bullet in the back; he would die along with his mount as they plunged into the canyon below them. He leaned into his horse’s neck, squeezed his eyes tightly, let go of the reins and threw his arms out to his sides, accepting what was to come.
The sound of thundering hooves below him suddenly ceased and he felt weightless. He knew in an instant that they were airborne. He clenched his teeth together and waited for the impact that was sure to be coming. Any moment, he would be tumbling head over heels with the painted pony as they collided with rocks, juniper and the thick trunks of piñon pine.
When the collision did not come for a very long while, he risked opening his eyes. They were still in the air. It was impossible. He sat up and looked around him. Far below, he could see the traces of the canyons, mesas and the branching, treelike pattern of the tributaries that plunged down from the jagged edges of the mesas.
He looked behind him and saw those who were chasing him plunging from the edge and tumbling down the steep slope. He had escaped, but how? He suddenly realized that it didn’t matter anymore. He had escaped, he was free and he was flying. There must be some sort of magic in the pony, because he, Parke Higgins, was flying.
He squealed as though he was a little boy once more. All of the worries, stresses and especially the nightmare of being chased, disappeared behind him. With his arms spread and his face turned toward the sun, he let the feeling of the wind envelop his entire body, covering him like the waves of an ocean. He was alive and he was free. He closed his eyes once more and floated peacefully. And then he heard crying.
There could be no crying in his new world of freedom. It was impossible. When he ventured to open his eyes, there was a woman. There was no doubt that she was a Native American woman by her dress and the long, jet-black hair flowing down her hunched back. Where had the pony gone? Why was he no longer flying? He looked around for the pony, but saw nothing but the chinked, log walls of an octagonal house and only the very basics for living. Why was he in a hogan? He wanted to go back to flying. A particularly gut-wrenching keening came from the hunched woman and his attention turned back toward her.
Hesitant, he moved toward her; perhaps he could comfort her. When he placed a hand on her back, her sobbing ceased and she slowly turned her head toward him. In spite of the trails of tears which had streaked the prominent lines of her cheeks, she was stunning. Her smooth, caramel skin, her full lips, proud nose and chin were all perfectly formed as though sculpted by a master; but it was the deep, haunting, black eyes that made his heart stop and then begin again in a rhythm he hadn’t felt since he had first tried to ask a girl on a date.
He started to speak and she was gone. He sat up in a panic. Where was he? Nothing around him was familiar. Had they captured him? Who were they? He looked at the figure lying beside him in the bed and everything came rushing back to him. No one had captured him. No one was chasing him. He was in a motel room, the Kachina Lodge, on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
He looked at the lit numbers on the digital clock beside the bed. Its red numbers displayed 3:27. He had planned on getting an early start, but this was ridiculous. He briefly thought through the dream that he had just had. The flying, the woman, the wind, the freedom; it was all so real and yet, not real. Hoping to return to it, he settled back into the overstuffed pillow which made his neck hurt. Motel pillows always made his neck hurt. He had intended to bring his own, but had forgotten it in the rush to get out the door.
He closed his eyes and tried to draw the painted pony back into his mind. When that failed, he attempted to place the face of the woman back into his consciousness, but that wouldn’t work either. He finally turned to look at the clock again. It had changed to 3:31. He had set it for 5:30. If I go to sleep right now, I can sleep two more hours, he reasoned. He closed his eyes and tried to force sleep to come.
When he looked at the clock again, it read 3:47. He quickly did the math. An hour and forty-five minutes of sleep. That’s not too bad. He tried to force sleep again. He saw 3:53 pass by without sleep; 4:03 and 4:17 as well. Frustrated, he finally tossed back the covers and slipped out of bed. He glimpsed out into the darkness of the canyon below the rim where the Kachina Lodge was perched. The grand view that was there during the light of day was eerily absent when covered in a shroud of darkness. He turned toward the table and took a seat in front of his laptop; trying not to awaken his wife with the light of the screen, he turned it toward the window and repositioned himself in front of it.
He opened the web browser and clicked on the bookmark for the Dreams Dictionary. He’d been there before and found that often times; he gained insight into things whenever he visited it. He typed in a search for flying and read the interpretation; in general, it meant that he had a positive feeling of freedom in his life. As he typed in each of the other things that he could remember from the dream, however, the interpretation became much more confusing.
He closed the laptop and considered slipping back into bed, but noticed that the clock read 5:08. Not much point in trying to sleep for 22 minutes. He looked out the window again. This time, he saw a tiny glow from the rising sun, beyond the eastern horizon, though it would still be nearly an hour before it made a full appearance.
He sat once more and looked over at the sleeping form. He loved her, but it was becoming more and more difficult to like her. He had hoped that their vacation to the Grand Canyon would help them restore some of the vitality which had long passed from their marriage. Initially, it had, but as the days wore on, she began to complain. Backward people, cheap motel, too dry, too dusty, the mules stink, the damned wind never stops and she hated motel beds; these were only some of the complaints that seemed to be repeated the most.
She simply wasn’t used to a simpler way of life. She was used to being catered to by everyone. She was used to the sharp, rectangular lines of the business world in St. Louis and the predictable logic of spreadsheets and monetary facts that never changed. She hated change. He had caught the brunt of her hatred of it several times. He had aged in the past 15 years of their marriage and, like every other male in the world past the age of forty, his middle was attempting to match the width and depth of his chest.
There was no doubt in his mind that he had become fat, old and boring. Maybe that was the real problem that she had, though she would never say it out loud. She was constantly critical, but never enough to come right out and lay out the whole truth. It was like being picked apart by ants rather than being fully devoured by a wolf. In many ways, he’d rather just be devoured and get it over with.
He was not helping the situation, either. He simply pressed it all down inside of himself and refused to confront the obvious issues which had come between them. He hated conflict and would rather wait for things to settle down. They always did after a while, though in the recent past, his waits had been longer and longer.
So where was the freedom that the dream interpretation had given him? He certainly could not see it arriving any time soon. The chase scene of the dream was much more accurate; it and the crying woman. His mind tried to retrace the features of her face, but failed. He wanted to try to remember her face for one of his paintings. Frustrated by his attempt to recall her, he looked at the clock once more: 5:28. That was that. He headed for the shower.