by Jeff Soloway
“Bullshit,” said Brian. “You’re worried about protests. Should we be worried too?” Brian elbowed Grayson in the bicep, which struck me as overly familiar, and then offered him a nip too, which struck me as imprudent. Grayson scrunched his brow in solemn consideration before accepting. Marlene huffed and looked away. I did the same.
“What do you know, Grant?” Brian demanded.
Grant tried to bank a smile off the rearview mirror. “Grant’s Rule: Ignore Assholes Till They Go Away.”
“The protesters aren’t scary,” Marlene assured us. “They just carry signs and chant stuff. They don’t believe in guns.”
“Wouldn’t have lasted long against the Soviets,” Brian pronounced darkly. “They better believe in Gus Greenbaum. I don’t have to tell you about his past, do I?” He lowered his voice, and began to regale Marlene with mafia rumors that, apparently, everyone knew. All the time I could see Grant’s eyes in the rearview, watching all of us, but mostly me.
—
We traveled up and out of Glendale, past the stadium, into the empty reaches of parched scrubland. The median strip was landscaped with saguaro cactuses. Dry red hills in the distance calloused the landscape. Brian and Grayson passed the flask over Marlene until they dozed off.
By Flagstaff, the climate had changed. Snow-tipped mountains brooded over the city. Ponderosa pines crowded the highway. I kept watching Victoria, who was now reading, now propping her head against the window, now whispering to Grant, never glancing back at me. I’d spent almost as much time silently watching her that day as I had talking to her during all our prior meetings combined.
Near Williams, we turned for the last stretch before Tusayan and the Grand Canyon. The ponderosas had disappeared; cattle fences now bordered the highway. A few nobly weathered ranch houses were barely visible in the scrubby expanses; also a few battered trailers that looked like they had crawled off the highway to die.
Finally, we passed Grand Canyon Airport and entered the town of Tusayan. For the first time all day, traffic slowed us down.
Tusayan is a civilization built entirely along the road to the Grand Canyon, the way ancient Egypt was built along the Nile. All commercial life is right by the roadside—chain hotels such as the Best Western and the Holiday Inn; frontier-themed family restaurants such as the Yippee-Ei-O! Steakhouse and the (to my mind) menacingly named We Cook Pizza; the handful of Mexican cafés, reflecting the heritage of those local people who worked in the restaurants; and such cultural offerings as the National Geographic Grand Canyon Visitor Center and IMAX Theater, which showed its one feature, the Grand Canyon movie, thirteen times a day in the high season, a mere ten times a day in the winter. You had to look closely for signs of civic life. The Tusayan Fire Department and town offices were hidden behind a Wendy’s. The post office was inside the General Store. Access to residential side roads was managed not by lights but by rotaries, in the latest style of upmarket tourist towns throughout the Southwest.
Everyone was awake now except for Grayson. As we passed a confidently unobtrusive Grand Chalet sign, we all stared out the window for a glimpse of the hotel’s monumental façade. It was far to spot. Far down a laboriously landscaped approach road, I thought I could just see its white ramparts, salt cliffs above a dry sea.
“Where are we going?” asked Jeannette. We were passing a sign for an old campsite and RV park called Camper Village, which now held trailers housing local workers.
“To the Grand Canyon!” announced Grant.
I heard a groan and glanced behind me. Grayson had awakened and was instinctively reaching between his legs for the flask. Brian passed it to him.
We careened around the last rotary and were immediately met with a phalanx of brake lights. Four lanes, all packed with cars churning carbon as they lined up for the Grand Canyon National Park’s entrance. Grant bulled his way into the far-right lane and kept speeding along, half on the paved shoulder, half on the dirt. Finally an empty lane opened up. A sign identified it as an express lane for buses. The ranger saw Grant and waved us on. We were VIPs.
“Grayson!” Grant said to the mirror. “Grandview Point. You know the drill.”
I glanced behind and saw Grayson, for the first time, wave away Brian’s flask. “Ready,” he said. He wiped his forehead with the brim of his navy-blue GC2 Security cap.
“Ready for what?” I asked Grayson.
He glared at me with bloodshot eyes. Getting drunk had made him scarier.
“Can’t we change first?” asked Jeannette. “I smell like Brian’s armpits.”
Brian hooted, to show that he appreciated both humor and Jeannette. Having befriended Grayson, he was ready to turn his attentions away from Marlene.
“Got to make the sunset.” Grant leaned forward like a jockey as he drove.
“ ‘Oooooh, that smell!’ ” sang Brian. “ ‘Can’t you smell that smell?’ ”
Jeannette held up her phone, much as Moses must have held up the commandments. “Weather.com says we’ve got an hour till sunset.”
“You want to get there early,” said Grant, “to see the sun’s rosy fingers reaching deep below the rim. You ever seen the Grand Canyon?”
“Not yet.”
“Your first time shouldn’t be some half-assed experience. Don’t worry! You’re with a guy who knows what he’s doing. I’m going to bring the magic, Jeannette.”
“What a twat,” muttered Brian.
Chapter 10
Grandview Point was eight miles down the park’s East Road. Twilight is rush hour at most national parks, when the light is richest and the wildlife rouses from daytime naps to start feeding. At Yellowstone, one berry-snarfing bear in a roadside meadow can back up traffic farther than a jackknifed truck on the George Washington Bridge. The Grand Canyon has little charismatic wildlife, but the magnificent twilight visuals run the entire length of the rim, which means the traffic is brutal everywhere.
“Move!” Grant smacked at his dashboard.
Victoria stroked Grant’s forearm. “We’ll make it,” she murmured. He seized her hand and kissed it as he drove.
The van veered down the access road to the Grandview Point parking lot. Traffic slowed from a slow march to a slower stroll to a creep. Grant had his fist poised over the steering wheel but was able to suppress his New York instincts enough to keep from pounding on the horn. Finally he hit the brakes, slammed the transmission into park, scrambled out, and ripped open the sliding passenger door. Close enough. We could see just the tips of some burnt-orange Canyon crags in the distance.
“Champagne reception in twenty minutes!” he announced. “You’re all being welcomed by Mayor Greenbaum herself. But first go take your pictures. Don’t forget your sweaters. Grayson, meet me in ten.”
We jumped out one by one. Jeannette, Magda, and Brian, drawn by the view and borne by the flow of people, drifted down the road toward the overlook. I waited. Grayson was the last to eject. When he hit the pavement, he wobbled and spread his arms, like a guy trying to stand up in a boat. He exhaled hard through puffed-up lips, as if to expel his drunkenness, and started down the road toward the parking lot and the overlook. Grant and Victoria climbed back in the van, presumably to hunt for a real parking spot.
I followed Grayson. He began to jog alongside the halted cars, one arm flailing, the other held at his hip, where his gun was. The road widened to accommodate parking spaces as it approached the overlook. I had to dodge kids scampering onto the pavement, parents darting back to their cars to burrow for sweatshirts, hatches being flung open from parked station wagons. Grayson halted, a rock amid the rapids, and scanned the area. The canyon was now gloriously in view, but he didn’t look at it. Someone’s backpack sideswiped him; he grunted in annoyance but remained still. I too had to stand and suffer the jostling of the crowd. He would see me if he turned around. He didn’t. He started forward again, moving diagonally through the prevailing current of people.
Past the overlook the road curved and fed int
o a larger parking lot. A van slowly rounded the turn and honked, making a nearby family of four leap nearly in unison, then laugh. Grayson never slowed.
Along the edge of the lot was a sidewalk that paralleled the rim and ran back to the main overlook. Grant started down the sidewalk, moving faster. Ahead was a bald young man holding a clipboard and a sign that read SAVE THE CANYON! NO MEGARESORT! He flashed a grin at anyone who showed any sign of interest in him. Several women glanced at him, then away. He was handsome but not enough to overcome his baldness and his sign. He wore a gray cabled sweater. The knuckles on his clipboard hand were red with the cold and the wind. The knuckles on the other hand were half-hidden by a plaster cast that ran up his forearm. Next to him, a chubby boy of about ten was perched on a jagged rock. The boy’s face was tense, perhaps from the physical and emotional effort it took to keep his butt from sliding off the rock, to keep his hands stuffed deep in the sweatshirt pocket, to keep from whining about the cold.
“Sign a petition to save the Canyon?” the man was asking. No one even slowed long enough to show annoyance at having to avoid him. He didn’t seem to mind. “Step right up, no waiting!” No one stopped. He looked down at the kid. “These people put the yawn in Grand Can-yawn.”
The kid tried to chuckle.
Grayson stopped in front of them. I lingered just behind.
“Long time,” Grayson said.
The man didn’t hear or didn’t pay attention, perhaps because Grayson was swaying a little. Activists know not to engage drunks. “Stop the Grand Canyon megaresort!” he called to a gaggle of tourists. “Don’t let the one percent suck the Canyon dry!” He finally looked at Grayson. “Save the world, sign my petition?”
“Gus says hi. Where you been?”
All cheer dropped from the man’s face. “Come on. I kept away.”
“Not far enough,” said Grayson.
“This is a national park. We have a right to be here.”
“Who says?”
“The Constitution.” The man smiled apologetically. “Hey. We should go have a beer together. Forget the political bullshit.”
Grayson reached for the man’s sign. The man hesitated but relinquished it. Grayson tried to snap the cardboard staff over his knee. It bent like a stale baguette.
“Watch out!” A portly guy in a bulky parka skipped off the sidewalk to avoid them.
Grayson dropped the crooked staff to the ground and grabbed at the activist’s sweater. The clipboard clattered to the ground. The boy stared up at them.
“I’ll sign!” I stepped forward and picked up his clipboard. The letterhead on the paper read GRAND CANYON DEFENSE LEAGUE.
“Will you look at that sunset,” Grayson said. He snatched the clipboard from me and hefted it in his hands a second. I imagined him flinging it like a Frisbee into the canyon, but instead he stooped and slid it under the nearest SUV. He cocked his eyebrows, proud of his resourcefulness, and cackled.
I had hoped my presence would be more restraining.
“We got a kid here,” said the activist. The boy pulled on his sweatshirt hood.
“Your problem,” said Grayson.
“Go back to the car.”
“Now?” the kid asked.
“Yeah, now. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The kid trotted off down the sidewalk. One less victim to worry about, but also one less witness to inhibit violence.
“Good move.” Grayson flipped open his jacket and tapped his holster. “Let’s go talk.”
“You can’t have a gun in the park,” the activist said. “You’ll get arrested.”
“By who?”
“The rangers.”
“I don’t see any rangers.”
“Someone’ll call them.”
“You?”
“Him.” The man pointed at me.
Grayson elaborately rubbed his fingers, loosening them up. “He’s with me.”
“Don’t be a moron, Grayson,” I said. “I’m a journalist. I’m writing all this down.”
“Good. This guy has to face the consequences.”
The activist brought his healthy hand up to protect his neck. “I thought I already did.”
“Just wait.”
The activist leaned back until he hit the rock wall behind him. “Dude! Sir.” How do you address a guy like Grayson? “You’re on the wrong side. Your bosses, they’re lying to you. To everyone. They’re destroying the Grand Canyon. They’re fooling everybody. They rigged the water meters. I can prove it.”
Grayson seized his elbow, spun him around, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him back toward the nearest parked vehicle. I thought he was going to smash the guy’s head against the hood, but instead he merely shoved him forward into the gap between the two parked SUVs, an unnatural canyon of black metal and reflective windows.
“Grayson, stop!”
He was too drunk to pay attention to me.
“Go ahead!” the activist cried. “Make me a story. Get me in the papers. That way we’ll save the Canyon, both of us together.” He glanced back at me, his last hope.
I pulled out my cellphone. “I’ve got a camera. I’ll take pictures and send them everywhere. Let him go.”
A teenage girl in a hoodie turned into our alley, hoping to cut through to the sidewalk, and gasped when she saw us, as if we were all three naked. But she turned back without saying anything.
Grayson yanked the activist’s head backward, preparing to slam it against the roof of the car.
“I’ll send the pictures to Gus first,” I said.
Finally, Grayson paused in his onslaught. The man’s head was frozen in midair, his face bright red.
“Are you Freddie Bridgewater?” I asked.
The man’s tendons looked like a bundle of sticks on fire, but through the flames came a smile. “How did you know?”
Grayson thrust his head forward into the car’s roof but without vigor. Freddie Bridgewater was able to get his arms up to cushion the impact. Grayson released him.
“You made a promise,” Grayson said. “If you don’t keep it, I suffer. Is that fair?”
“No,” Freddie agreed, wiping his nose on his sleeve and checking it for blood. “Give me one last chance.”
“One last.”
“Thank you.”
“Get your kid and your car, and go. Forever this time.”
“I’m gone, I swear it.” Freddie Bridgewater began to back away slowly.
Grayson turned away in disgust at both of us, and probably at himself, and walked away.
Freddie smiled in relief.
“Can we talk?” I said. “I’m a friend of Jewel Rider’s.”
“Good man,” he said. “Look to the sky.” He turned and jogged off in the same direction as the boy.
I caught up to Grayson on the sidewalk, on his way back to the overlook. “How far would you have gone?” I asked.
Grayson stopped. The wind whistled at us over the canyon. His bloodshot eyes were now hazy with moisture. “Don’t tell Marlene. Okay?”
Chapter 11
The twenty minutes to the reception weren’t up yet. I left Grayson and kept following the sidewalk. In the distance, workers were uncoiling a set of red rope. For us, I assumed. I decided to take a look at the Grand Canyon. I merged with the gathering stream of humanity flowing toward the tip of Grandview Point, a peninsula jutting out into the Canyon.
On the way I passed a sign that described and mapped the Grandview Trail, which began its descent nearby. Two National Park Service updates had been appended. The first read:
Traditional conditions on and around Grandview Trail have changed. Page Spring (also known as Miners Spring) is now dry. There is no reliable water source between Grandview Point and Hance Creek. Do not attempt to hike to Horseshoe Mesa without sufficient water for the trip there and back. Remember: GETTING TO THE BOTTOM IS OPTIONAL. GETTING TO THE TOP IS MANDATORY.
The other update, obviously newer, was duct-taped to the sign’s lower quad
rant. It featured several images of Jewel, including the headshot she liked to use as her author photo, in which her head was cocked questioningly and her face bore the faintest smile. She looked like she had you dead to rights and knew it. The update read:
The National Park Service is investigating the death of Jewel Rider, whose body was found near Hermit’s Trail on Sunday, April 13. She is believed to have been accompanied by an adult male. His identity is unknown.
Wearing: gray sweatshirt, orange hiking skirt.
Equipment: Backpack.
If you have any information regarding this individual or her companion, please contact the NPS tip line below.
“Believed to have been accompanied by an adult male”—a hint of scandal to jog people’s memory or at least get them talking over quesadillas at one of the Grand Canyon Village cafeterias. I approved. But how did they know she had had a male companion?
Beyond the sign, the crowd thickened. I tried to drill a passage between tourist-clumps to the guardrail at the tip of the point, got elbowed and stomped, and gave up. I retreated and tried to fight my way to the side of the peninsula, where I assumed the view would be sufficiently spectacular. But by the time the crowds thinned out, I’d had to drift almost back to the parking lot. A low stone wall lined the route to the overlook. I hopped the wall and followed a short path between a couple of towering pine trees. (For reasons of elevation and rainfall, Grandview Point is more impressively forested than the other rimside overlooks.) Straight ahead, past a short stretch of wild, rocky terrain, carved up by winding sandy paths, was the rim of the Grand Canyon. All the people hurrying by on the main path to the overlook point had missed the Canyon view all around them. More continued to stream by, ignoring me and my detour. They all assumed the view everyone else was hurrying toward was better.
They were wrong.
It was not my first time at the Grand Canyon, but I stared as intently as any Canyon virgin. At first the vast rockscape of mesas, buttes, spires, and valleys was pure chaos to my eye, a wild sea frozen in stone, but as I continued to stare, my mind began to find order in the terrain. I recalled what I’d just read in the geology appendix in Over the Edge and the other guidebooks I’d consulted (no one reads travel guides as carefully as a travel-guide writer). What at first looked merely like a random palpitation of rock was really a ridge extending from my side of the canyon, rising and falling on the way but always sloping down. What had seemed like a dark pool of water almost directly below was really the swelling terminus of a mini canyon. From my memory of the geologic diagrams all the guides had contained—a few so similar they had obviously been copied from the others—I could even identify some of the Grand Canyon’s geologic layers by their characteristic colors: Coconino sandstone, Hermit shale, the rust-colored Redwall. Jewel would have known not just these but all the geologic layers—to hikers, they were vital navigational landmarks. I wished I’d had the chance to hike the Canyon with her.