“Oh, I’ll bet you compare all the girls to virgin lumber.”
“No, ma’am. Never have a one before.”
“Well, that’s high praise coming from someone like you.”
“You bet it is. So, before I step out of line, is there a Mr. Wild?”
“No.”
“Not even a wannabe?”
“No.”
“Hard to believe. Woman like you, I would have guessed there was a waiting list.”
“Well, there’s not.”
We were both quiet now, still looking at one another.
“So, what did you do in the army?”
“Army Rangers. Got to see a little bit of the world. Mostly the Middle East, a few months in Haiti. Finished up at Fort Benning, and used my GI Bill to get my degree so I could work for the Forest Service. That’s all I ever wanted to do. The army was just a means to that end.”
“You couldn’t have just gone straight to school?”
“No, there was no way. My mom was a solo parent; my old man ran out on her when we were young. I have two younger brothers. She needed my help while they were in high school; I couldn’t just go to school. By the time I got out of the service, my brothers were both out on their own. It worked out all right.”
“Well, that was awfully good of you,” I said, meaning it.
“I owed her. She did without so we could have what we needed. Somebody needed to help her, and I wasn’t going to run out on her, too. I figured I’d be a nice guy. The way I look at it, she gave me the most precious gift I’ve ever been given-my life. And she gave me love. No matter what, I always knew that she loved me. She still does. There’s something to be said for loyalty, for sticking by the people you love, don’t you think?”
Now I wanted to leave. I just wanted to be at home, in my cabin, in my bed, under my down comforter. “I’m sure that’s how it’s supposed to be,” I said. I shoved my arm into one coat sleeve and turned in my seat to get the other side. “Well, are you ready to go? I need to be going.”
“Sure.” He gave me a curious look.
“I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”
“Of course,” he said. “No problem.”
Instead of going home to get some rest before going out again that night, I drove all the way to Tanoah Pueblo after that. I found Momma Anna hanging wash on a thin rope strung from the apple tree in her front yard to the corner of her brush and log portal on the front of her adobe house. She stopped what she was doing when she saw my Jeep pull up in front. The resident dogs barked and yipped a few times out of obligation, but then quickly returned to the spot where they had been napping together near the base of the tree.
I approached my medicine teacher, bowed my head slightly as a sign of respect.
Without a word, she picked up her basket of laundry and handed it to me so she wouldn’t have to bend over each time she got another item from the basket to hang on the line. I followed her along as she pinned dish towels and washcloths to the rope.
“Momma Anna, I am not sure that I understand the lesson you gave me.”
“Not I give. Old One give.”
“Okay, but I still am not sure I understand.”
She stopped hanging wash and looked at me.
“Am I supposed to be practicing forgiveness? Forgiving others? Or asking others to forgive me?”
She made a tst-tst sound. “Lesson clear. You the one need forgiveness.” She pointed her finger at my chest. “Now, go. No more fool around. You see this wash?” She pointed at the basket in my arms. “I hang all the wash, then I go in house. Not hang some thing, go in house, leave some thing still in basket wet.” She grabbed the laundry basket out of my hands. “Now go do lesson, come back when you have empty basket.”
Before going home, I drove across the gorge bridge and down the canyon rim road a few miles to the south. I parked on top. Still a little sore, I walked gingerly out to the edge. I could see almost to Los Alamos, as the bright morning sun made long, lilac shadows of the faraway peaks to the southeast. Below me, only an inch wide, and green as clover, the Rio Grande-like any errant child-deepened the furrow on the face of its Mother. An immature bald eagle floated effortlessly on a thermal loft in the canyon below me, its head and tail feathers just beginning to turn white. I made it to be about three years old, finally out on its own, without parents to help it survive.
I let the wind blow through me until I was hollowed out. Then I went home and tried to sleep.
13
That evening, I picked up Redhead from the stables at the ranger station and rode up the fence line. I made base camp in an area almost exactly between Cañoncito and the site of my rendezvous with Kerry Reed that morning near Cañada de la Entranas. I was just a few miles from a tiny mountain village called Boscaje. From my camp on a high slope, I could look down the mountain to the southwest and see part of the four-wheel track that intruders into the wilderness area had been using, and even a little of the Forest Service road farther off to the northwest, which seemed to be another primary point of access. If someone drove down either of those, I would know it.
Just before dark, I mounted Redhead again and set out to sweep a circle with a mile or two radius from my base. Because my backside was still a little sore, I didn’t plan to do much more riding than I had to. Forest Service land lay immediately to the east, and on my sweep, I checked the fence bordering their jurisdiction and ours. The fenced boundary stretched a line north and south of where I sat. Looking north, I lost sight of the barbwire within a few hundred yards in the trees. Looking south, toward Cañada de la Entranas, I followed the straight line of fence posts with my eyes until it became a point and then disappeared in the distance.
I don’t know why, but I rode south along the fence line, contrary to my original plan to sweep a small circle around camp. It was getting cold, and the light was fading, but I just kept riding along the wire at a slow but steady pace. I leaned on my left hip to protect my bruised buttock, watching the posts a few dozen yards ahead, riding mindlessly, no particular method in what I was doing, no fully formed thoughts in my head.
When I had gone about two miles, I saw tracks cut into the slope where a vehicle had left the four-wheel-drive road and taken to the backcountry. The vandal had cut through the fence and pulled it down, then carved a swath through the brush and scrub piñon with a vehicle. The tracks indicated that someone had headed up and around the higher grade, in the general direction of Boscaje. I followed the ruts onto the Forest Service land and a hundred yards or so back in. For twenty or thirty more yards, the tracks ran above, but roughly parallel to, the four-wheel-drive road. Small saplings had been broken and crushed by the intruder’s tires, and there were signs of some sliding and swerving around larger scrub. The hard freeze of the last two nights was probably the only reason this vehicle had not been mired.
I stopped and took a pull on my canteen. I patted Redhead. “Good girl,” I cooed into her ear, leaning over her neck. “Good girl.”
She did a little volt, stepping high to the side. She wanted to go, I could feel that. She was excited, ready to get on down the trail.
I looked back down the incline at the four-wheel-drive road, and it reminded me of riding in Kerry’s truck that morning. A look ahead in the direction the tracks were leading gave me a strange feeling of internal sparks, the same way I feel when I’m tracking and close to my quarry. The trees grew denser ahead, and I knew it would have been impossible for someone to drive a vehicle much farther in. The ruts cut away from the road, higher up the mountain, and directly into what would soon become an area of impenetrable forest.