The Meaning of Isolated Objects

by Billie Hinton

  He considered Las Cruces, and if that wasn’t far enough he could drive on down to El Paso. But when he looked at the map he’d brought from her house in Austin, he couldn’t reconcile driving the shorter distance south. His eye kept traveling north.

  Her red line had ended in Albuquerque so that’s where he went. For some reason he felt she would end up there, or call him.

  It was half a day’s drive. He actually drove southwest briefly to get to Highway 25, and as he went through Las Cruces, Truth or Consequences, and back through Socorro, pulled over to see if anything came to him. He got images like a slide show, and she didn’t seem upset. Instead she seemed giddy and he wondered if this were worse. It could be she was falling in love, which would make her vulnerable.

  The fleeting images weren’t enough to go on, though. He kept driving and found a small motel in Albuquerque, where he could lay low until the next thing came. He checked in and took a nap, then went out to get some air.

  He suddenly felt he was channeling Wendell. His mind filled with thoughts he felt were hers, or would be if she were with him. He drove west of the city and tried to follow a path she might take. He tried to put his trust in something outside himself.

  The Petroglyph National Monument was on the west mesa of Albuquerque, where he walked in the harsh sun, and squinted at ancient handprints carved onto the shiny chunks of black basalt that jutted from the earth. The spaces between were filled with brushy green plants and bright yellow flowers, sage and yucca.

  There were simplistic but elegant birds drawn on rock, a sharply angled snake, a deer-like creature with a spear run through its mid-section. He wanted to assign meaning to what he saw, but perhaps there was none to attribute. Maybe all there was to see was the hot day, bright with light and primitive images. Archetypes. A direct line to the unconscious.

  He did not need to name the thing for its power to be true.

  She seemed to be speaking to him, via signs and symbols.

  On his way back to the parking lot, a rattlesnake coiled in the sun, in what looked to be a nest formed of a hollow in the sand, backed with dried grass and the rise of pocked stone behind it.

  A muted scuffle revealed a roadrunner, smaller than he remembered, there and then gone.

  He had no urge to follow. He was content to have seen it crossing his path. This lesson he would not belabor. Like so much air and light, it floated through his mind. What he needed to take from it was there already.

  So many times he made things harder than they really were.

  In the car her presence seemed to fade. He suddenly felt silly and wondered if he had a fever.

  He had been in the sun too long without a hat, which was foolish.

  Back in the hotel room he dreamed he was released, a coin tossed, an arrow shot randomly forward. He had no idea where he was headed.

  In the morning he went to the gym hoping to keep busy for an hour. He spent thirty minutes on the treadmill and watched CNN on the TV hanging from the ceiling. Five minutes caught him up on world events, at least from the perspective of the American media.

  There was so much more going on. Some of it centered around him, but more of it had to do with Wendell.

  Sweat poured down the sides of his face. He needed to wear himself out. Needed to fill some time.

  What it would be like to retire. What the hell would he do all day? Get up at dawn and that would be sleeping in for him, go for an hour run, breakfast. Throw in weight training, read the paper, check email. Finish all that and it would be, what, eight a.m. or so?

  One long fucking day after another to fill and not enough to fill them with. Okay, add in a drive up to Skyline and a hike. Add in lunch. There’d still be hours and hours of nothing to do.

  Funny thing was, that’s most of what he did on the job, wait. He didn’t think he could handle waiting for nothing at all.

  He had no idea what had brought this on. He wasn’t going to retire. It had popped into his head like some freaking idea planted there by a woman, and yes, that’s exactly what it was. The demon seed that Jess planted. Threw at him, more like.

  If anything he’d go private, sweet contract deal, more money, better gear, all that. But to go from what he’d done for twenty-five years to nothing? No way. No how.

  Weights. Sauna. Shower. Back to the room. He could sit and dwell on how much he missed Jessie. Could think about her sweet face and soft body and jack off. The fact was, when it came down to it, what she intended was to change who he was. That wasn’t going to happen.

  They weren’t suited. Lynnie had handled it. Lynnie had never once asked him to stop. She’d given up college, psychology. Jess had taken Lynnie’s dream and run with it. Then Lynnie’s daughter. Now him.

  And that’s what Jess would be fighting the rest of her life: trying not to get lost in Lynnie’s shadow.

  Down the street there was a hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint. He got some lunch and ate at the rickety table crusted with old food just to stay out of the hotel. The food was good, the beer cold, and there were no women to distract him. He could have been in Mexico. On the clock. He could have been doing his job. Low drag.

  He had waited for governments, for friends, for a turn with women he paid to service him. He guessed it was high time he did some waiting for his daughter.

  He walked through this city as he had so many others. Let the rhythm of its inhabitants beat gently at his heels. He soaked in what there was: light, shadow, color. The shrill city sounds, the low but steady drumbeat of nature, voices of people on the street.

  He did what he always did, yielded over to blending instead of standing out, allowed for the slow and easy slide toward invisibility that was crucial to his work. Invisible but present, ears cocked, lines of communication open to the ones who needed to know. He didn’t know any other way to be. He had lived it for so many years.

  The idea of joining a community the way a father or a husband would had become alien to him. He wouldn’t know how to act in such a role. He’d never had to learn.

  A woman noticed him in a coffee shop and shot him the look. It surprised him that he didn’t return it. His desire for that kind of union seemed to be fading. He didn’t know what that meant. What it might mean when he went back to work. Some of what made the long assignments bearable were the couplings. If he no longer wanted those punctuations, what would it be like? What would take the place of that kind of gratification?

  He was thinking too much.

  He turned in the rental car for a truck. Once again he needed to get outside the city. A day trip, no destination, just somewhere less inhabited than Albuquerque, off the beaten path where he could be alone.

  He didn’t look at maps. Didn’t read the names of places. He simply drove until he saw a good place to stop. He watched the sun set and then circled back to the motel.

  They rode east on 380 but then Tag decided to turn around and take the interstate south. “I liked the quieter way,” Wendell grumbled, but Tag lifted his chin toward the road.

  “There’s more to see down 25,” he countered. “We can make a few stops, take our time.”

  Lunch in Truth or Consequences made all three of them laugh and began a banter that, fueled by margaritas and tequila shots, went downhill fast.

  “Let’s play.” Tag slammed his glass down on the table.

  “Play what?”

  “The game. Truth or consequences.”

  They were all on the edge of drunk, still coherent, but itching for trouble. They shared a streak of something, not quite meanness, but close. A desire to cut so close to the quick with truth they risked something big.

  She tossed a dull nickel that spun and fell with a clink muted by the unfinished wood of the table’s top. Tag got to ask the first question. He glanced at Keller, then looked back to her. “So, Wendell.”

  His eyes were searing in the changing light, the vivid glaze of late afternoon sun through a restaurant window.

  “Are you falling in love with
me?”

  She wouldn’t answer that question and he knew it. He didn’t smile, simply waited for her response. Eyes glued to one another, they sat with the sour taste of lime in their mouths.

  It was a test. She didn’t know what he was doing or why, but it had something to do with the mountain. He wanted to get her alone on top of that mountain. His eyes were steady, which pissed her off. He was too measured. Something was wrong.

  Or not. She couldn’t get a good read. One minute it felt wrong and the next, right. Right in that yes, she was falling in love with him. Damn it.

  “Consequences.”

  The consequence of not telling the truth. She waited.

  “Spend the night with Keller.” Tag’s face revealed no emotion. He was testing not only her but his friend. Himself.

  He thought she would back down, that she’d confess. That, yes, she was falling in love with him. Couldn’t possibly sleep with his best friend. But Tag didn’t know her stubborn streak. The way she dug her heels in when pushed up against a wall.

  And Keller was no rescuer. Tag had made the bed and depending on her call, Keller would be more than happy to lie in it. She could guess what he’d want to do, the exact way he’d want to do it.

  “Okay.” Her hand slid across the table to Keller’s. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

  The ride was different on Keller’s bike. Her arms didn’t wrap as far around, and he went faster. They rode on to the next town, Las Cruces, and Keller pulled into a little motel right outside town.

  “You hungry?”

  “Not yet.”

  He unlocked the door to the room and stood aside so she could go in first. “Why didn’t you just tell the truth?” He stretched out on the bed.

  “To prove that I didn’t have to.”

  “Come over here, then.”

  Keller reminded her of Roger Ray, some guy who had known her dad when she was in high school. He came by one weekend when her dad was gone and she was supposed to be spending the weekend with a friend, but didn’t. Some plan they’d cooked up that fell through, and she’d felt like being alone, so she stayed at her dad’s house instead of going home to Aunt Jessie’s.

  Like Keller, Roger had been bulky and slightly crude. He’d asked if she had a boyfriend and she said no. Things went on from there. Got a little out of hand. Roger Ray had not been brutal, but he’d had a huge appetite. When he left she knew more about what that kind of man liked.

  Back then, she had thought of herself as putting something over on her father, but of course he’d never known about that weekend.

  Keller was into watching. He talked it out, half commentary, half telling her what to do next. She did everything he asked without emotion, just the determination to prove something to Tag, who wasn’t even there to see it.

  And yet she felt his presence.

  They had exhausted all possibilities by three a.m. She left Keller’s huge body asleep, his face shadowed with beard, the source of her stinging face. She walked out to the pool and sat in the dark. The chill in the night air crept forward and took hold in all her sore places. Her chest felt like it was caving in. As though she’d gone hollow.

  Tag slipped through the gate to the pool area, illuminated briefly by a beam of light from beyond the wall. He approached slowly, hands low and palms up. He crouched at her feet and winced. “I smell him,” he said. “You did it.”

  He put his head on her lap. She had won this round.

  In the coffee shop at dawn, a local sitting at the barstool beside her told a story of Lozen, an Apache woman who rode as a warrior, first with her brother and later with Geronimo himself. His wrinkled hands fingered the salt and pepper shakers.

  “She fell in love with a Confederate soldier, a deserter, sheltered by the Apache.” The withered older man had dark hair gone silver in streaks, eyes that seemed too wet as he continued. “She fell in love with him but he left her, went for the gold further west. Most say he broke her heart. She gave her life to her people. Lozen had powers, ways to sense where the enemy was, healing ways.”

  He left off there and looked at her one last time, then spun slowly on the stool and walked out the door.

  Wendell had goose bumps on her arms.

  Tag’s shoulder bumped hers. “He was trying to give you your destiny.”

  She must have looked terrified because Tag put his hand on her arm and added, “Of course, you don’t have to accept.”

  The ride to White Sands went quickly because they only stopped for gas. Her arms were sore from gripping Tag’s waist, and her eyes and throat, even with the helmet, were parched.

  Tag had to check in and get the key to the house he’d be living in while he was there. She gathered pamphlets and informational brochures while she waited, wondering how long she’d even be there. After what happened with Keller she kept expecting Tag to seize on that when he needed a reason to end things, that he had laid a trap which would grab her later, when she’d forgotten all about it.

  The house was small but nicely furnished with everything they might need: furniture, linens, towels, dishes. High speed internet, even. What it didn’t have was what she needed most. The details of a life, items that might reveal something about the man who lived there. How he’d found her and why he’d brought her here. What any of it meant.

  But what she got was standard military issue. Anonymous furnishings that any Army wife might be familiar with as she moved with her husband around from base to base.

  They took turns with the shower and she was asleep before Tag got back from the grocery store.

  In the morning he had an early meeting, and woke her to say goodbye.

  “I’ll be gone most of the day.” He pulled a shirt on and ran a hand back over his hair. “You can walk into town and find something to do, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “As soon as I can, we’ll go to Salinas.”

  “That’s fine. See you later.”

  He was all business, already, now that he was on post with meetings and soldiers running around everywhere.

  The stack of brochures was still on the table where she’d left them. She sat down at the table with the brochures, coffee, and a muffin.

  The first one was about the white sand dunes themselves. The ripples in the photograph were intriguing; apparently it took a wind of 17 mph to create them, bouncing the grains of sand until they reached an angle of 34 degrees. Then gravity kicked in, and slid an avalanche of sand down the slip face, moving the dune forward. Saltation, it was called.

  Her smaller pack had room for money, water, an apple, a power bar, and the map of the post. The White Sands Missile Range Museum was her first stop. She learned more about the place: that the white sands were pure gypsum and unlike quartz-based sand, didn’t get hot in the sun, so you could walk on it barefoot in the middle of the summer. That the Fat Man, a 13-pound plutonium bomb, had been exploded at Trinity Site on July 16th, 1945. The explosion turned the sand into green glass called trinitite, shattered windows for 120 miles, and rattled the ground for 250.

  The entire post was 2.2 million acres and White Sands was an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.

  The Missile Park, next to the museum, had a path that wound through missiles pointed at the sky, with plaques detailing the types and what they were used for.

  It was odd, the Missile Park. Like the missiles were rides or climbing structures, but in fact they were real. Actual missiles used for blowing things up.

  Someone in the museum recommended a restaurant on post, The Frontier House, so she set out to find that next. The special of the day was spaghetti with meat sauce, and she found a table and settled in with the remaining brochures.

  The woman at the museum had said she could get a tour, a better one if Tag set it up, to Trinity Site, the dunes, a few more places. And of course there was Salinas Peak, with Tag, as soon as he managed a day off.

  Walking back to the house in the afternoon, the thing most noticeable about W
hite Sands was the bright blue sky and the Organ mountain range circling the town, brown and rugged. On the street ahead two little girls rode bicycles with training wheels while their mothers followed on foot, talking. They both smiled as she passed.

  “Did you just move in?” The darker-haired one spoke, but both of them waited for her answer.

  “Yes, but I’m not here to stay that long, it’s just temporary.”

  “Come over for coffee sometime. We’re just across the street. I’m Jill and this is Sara.”

  “Wendell. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “So what’s your husband here for?”

  Wendell had no idea what to say. The idea of Tag, of a husband, was so foreign, but then, behind that, intriguing. “He’s doing a special project.”

  “Oh, he must be with that psych ops thing that just started.”

  She just smiled back at them. Psych ops. Interesting.

  “Well, here I am. Thanks for the coffee invite. I’ll come by sometime.”

  They waved and walked to the other side of the street. When she got to the front door a special delivery envelope was propped at the bottom. Once inside she didn’t hesitate. She opened it, expecting some sort of psychological top secret memos, but there were only drawings. Dozens of them. Each page had a date written at the top, all during the year she was born, 1977, and beneath that the number 27.

  Each sketch had an 8x10 photo attached with a paper clip. The first sketch was a series of lines and circles, and the attached photo a simple Tinker Toy construction.

  The sketch matched the photo almost perfectly in its lines and planes.

  The rest of the sketches were similar, each captured the essence of the objects and their placement in the photographs. The sketches reminded her of the sketches her father had doodled on scraps of paper, the backsides of envelopes. He had done it all her life, and sometimes she did it too. Completely intrigued, she stuffed the papers back into the envelope and stuck the flap back the way it was.