White Plains

by David Hicks

  December 24, 2009

  Dear Nathan,

  I am writing to you because I have been unable to see you or talk to you on the phone, even though I have tried many times. Your mother is angry with me. I want you to understand that she is You are such a good boy and I am so proud of you. You have been very patient good during this hard time. I am sure you miss me and I hope you know I miss you and Janey too, so much that my heart hurts, and I have been crying at night abou.

  The reason why I have been trying so desperately to see you and talk to you is that I want to tell you I have to go away for a while. I am sure you and your sister will be very sad about this, and I feel terrible about it, but I have to do this. I made a mistake and I have to make things right. I will still try to see you and I will still try to call you but so far that has not been working because your mom is still very mad at me. Eventually Soon I hope she will no longer everything will be more normal and we will be able to talk on the phone and there is also a way we can talk on the computer and see each other’s faces like on TV. It may be helpful if you tell your mom you miss me and want to talk to me.

  I hope you get this letter. I am giving it to Vanessa’s mom, and I am giving her your Christmas presents too, so she can give them to you next time she sees you. I was supposed to be with you toni Here I am on your porch and

  I was hoping to spend

  We were supposed to go to Grandma’s

  I love you and Janey so much. I will always be your dad and I will always love you. You are both so beautiful.

  Love forever,

  Dad

  COLORADO

  WRESTLING APOLLO

  It was becoming increasingly clear to Flynn that he was lost. Deeply, perhaps irretrievably, lost. In the desert. And on horseback, no less.

  He was doing his best not to panic, but the sun was descending towards the horizon and he and Casey, his new girlfriend, were somewhere near the Utah/Colorado border. When they first started riding, Flynn had been awed by the landscape, the pale rusts and yellows, a sky bluer than he’d ever thought possible. Nathan would love it here, he thought; it looked like the landscape from one of his son’s dinosaur books. But now it seemed dauntingly barren, like the surface of Mars. He thought of a novel that ended with the main character handcuffed to the man he had just killed, with no water left in the canteen, surrounded by a vast desert like this one.

  Casey had led them into this predicament—or at least that was his view of things. His tendency was to allow himself to be manipulated into bad situations, feel sorry for himself, and blame others for it. When they had pulled up to the Desert Spring Ranch and saw the note—“Back soon, feel free to go for a ride”—Casey had immediately gone to the stables, pulled down two saddles, and told Flynn (who reminded her they didn’t even know these people, and by the way he had never been on a horse in his life) that things were different out here, more hospitable and less formal, and as for riding, there was really nothing to it; with his long legs and athleticism, he’d be a natural. So now that they had gone out too far and lost their way, Flynn fully expected her to be the one to get them back. She was, after all, a former wilderness guide, whereas he had no idea where they were; it was all he could do just to stay on the damn horse. It pitched into and out of gaits, and had twice tried to buck him off, but Flynn had held onto the saddlehorn for dear life, yelling out “Whoa!” to no effect whatsoever.

  Casey, on the other hand, sat in the saddle as if it were an extension of her sacrum. “You okay?” she asked. They had just given up looking for the animal trail they’d more or less followed on their way out (the patches of snow, the long stretches of smooth rock, and the change in lighting had made it impossible to find as they backtracked), and Casey had suggested they head back “in the general direction” of the guest ranch; but it was hard to determine what that general direction might be.

  “Doing fine,” Flynn said, as he leaned over to pat the horse’s sweaty neck. He knew Casey had counted on a brisk ride so as to make it back before dark, but the unexpected extent of his incompetence, and the “orneriness” of his horse, had slowed their progress.

  “Except for the whole being lost thing,” he added. He was wearing his Mets cap, a pair of old jeans, a fleece Casey had bought him at a little shop in New Mexico, and new hiking boots that kept getting caught in the stirrups. Casey wore ostrich-skin boots, an old suede coat, and a dirty cowboy hat, all the same color as the sandstone around her, the same color as her hair as well, the ends of which hid part of her mouth when she smiled. She was a bestselling author, known for her depictions of Western women, Western men, and Western landscapes. Flynn was—or until two weeks ago used to be—a professor of Literature at Fairfield University in Connecticut. They had met on campus when she had given a reading from her new essay collection, Like Walking on a Glacier. She had stood straight and strong at the podium, her hands fluttering the air like she was shooing away butterflies. During the signing afterwards, Flynn, who had been separated from his wife for a year and a half, waited until the last book was autographed before approaching her, and the ensuing conversation, followed by a pleasant stroll around campus, had led to a tryst at her hotel. A month later he flew out to visit her at her ranch in Sanctuary, Colorado, where he gazed at the Continental Divide and felt his chest expand. The trip back to New York saw a return of his migraines, renewed legal negotiations, and futile waits in parking lots on the days he was scheduled to have the kids. So when Casey told him she was pregnant, Flynn—after first asking how on earth that could have happened, given their precautions—knew what he needed to do. At the end of the fall semester, on the cusp of being awarded tenure, he quit his job, packed up his Accord, and drove across the country to set things right. When he arrived in Sanctuary, he got out of his car, took in the big blue sky, the grove of aspens, and the horses out grazing in the hundred acres of high grass that abutted the base of the Divide. Casey came out of her log cabin with uplifted chin, a big smile, and outstretched arms, and told him that by way of welcoming him to his new life, she had planned out a week-long tour of the Wild West: it would begin in Santa Fe and end in eastern Utah, at this place called the Desert Spring Ranch.

  Which was somewhere “back that way,” Casey said, as they slowed their horses to get their bearings. They were approaching the edge of the mesa, at least a thousand feet up, so Flynn held back as Casey walked her horse right to the cliff. “There’s the Green,” she said, pointing to a snake-shaped impression in the land far below. Casey’s skin was cast in an orange glow, and she sat in the saddle with her belly pooched, a Buddhist cowgirl. She pointed to some distant peaks. “Between us and those mountains,” she said, “maybe thirty or forty miles, not a single house or road. No tents, no campsites, not even a line camp.”

  Flynn nodded, even though he had no idea what a line camp was, or how it was that any human could see for forty miles. He was tired of asking questions that made him feel like an idiot. He needed to fit in here; he needed this to work. He had left New York to an eruption of disgust and confusion—from his colleagues, his students, his family, and of course, his wife. He was being impulsive and irresponsible, everyone said. He was abandoning his children, and it was useless for him to explain that his wife had already alienated him from them, hiding them at her sister’s or taking them out of school early when it was his day to be with them, shutting off the ringer to the landline so he couldn’t even call to say goodnight. It’s not as if Colorado offered any form of redemption—it had all metastasized quite beyond that—but he had cut so many ties, had offended so many people, and had heard all who were dear to him say that Casey was totally wrong for him, that at the very least he needed to prove, if only to himself, that moving here hadn’t been a huge mistake.

  When Casey turned and moved her horse into a trot, Flynn gave his horse a polite kick, but nothing happened. “Kick him like you mean it,” Casey called back, so he heeled the hors
e again, harder, and then again, worried he would injure the animal, until finally it snorted and lurched into its new gait.

  As Flynn bounced along behind Casey, the last red slice of sun disappeared beneath the horizon and the mountain peaks slowly dropped to black, while the sky silhouetting them remained a clear and radiant blue. This had become Flynn’s favorite time of day, but now he dreaded it, since it signaled the onset of a long night: fifteen hours of darkness and high-altitude cold. It had warmed up to around seventy that afternoon, but Flynn knew it was capable of dropping to below zero overnight.

  The bottom half of Orion had appeared, the rest of it hidden by clouds. But with no moon, and their headlamps stashed in Casey’s Forerunner back at the ranch, they soon wouldn’t be able to see. They looked for any sign of lamplight, sniffed the air for smoke. The yips and howls of coyotes cascaded from all directions.

  Casey stopped her horse, dismounted, and nodded her heard towards Orion. “That’s south,” she said, then pointed to her right. “So we need to head this way.” She patted her horse’s flank. “These guys gotta be hungry. If we let them go they’ll probably head home, and we can follow them on foot.”

  This made no sense to Flynn. Horses were like homing pigeons? And even so, wouldn’t they gallop faster than he and Casey could run? How would the owners of the ranch feel, having a couple of tourists lose their valuable horses?

  “If I thought there was any chance you could stay on your horse,” Casey said, “I’d say we loosen the reins, kick ’em hard, and we’d race right home.” She shrugged. “But I don’t want to risk that. That’s how people die.”

  Flynn wanted to say he could do it. He could tighten his thighs, lean forward, and stay on his horse as it galloped home. But they both knew otherwise.

  Casey held the reins as Flynn dismounted, then handed him the reins of both horses as she removed their headstalls and pulled out an old blanket that was tucked under her saddle. “Okay, let’s head home now,” she said, and slapped her horse on the flank. Flynn, taking her cue, let go of the reins and smacked his horse as well, hard, the way a man was supposed to smack a horse. “What are you doing?” Casey cried out as his horse stepped away, skittishly at first, and then both horses burst into a single-minded gallop in the general direction of where the sun had set. Casey and Flynn hurried after them, but the horses went too fast and were quickly out of sight, the tromping of their hooves fading back into the vast and chilling silence.

  Flynn and Casey slowed, gasping for breath, then gave up. Before coming to the West, Flynn had never known how the altitude could grip your chest, tighten your head, seize your lungs. Casey had her hands on her hips, her chest heaving. Now what? he wanted to say. All week, she had been completely in charge: she had brought all the gear, taught Flynn how to set up a tent, shown him how to make a fire, supplied and cooked their meals, demonstrated what to do if they saw a bear or mountain lion, shown him how to put a saddle on a horse, and taught him how to ride the horse. But now? He had arrived in Colorado only a week ago, and already he felt more like a burden than a boyfriend.

  Casey, still panting, asked why he had done that; she meant for them to hold their horses by the reins as they walked alongside them.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry,” Flynn said.

  She shook her head as she opened her water bottle, told Flynn to take a sip, and drank a little herself. Flynn understood they were rationing now, something people did in movies when they were hopelessly lost. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “Let me think.”

  He looked up to the sky, hoping for some moonlight, even a sliver, but they had seen the last of it while camping the night before, the slimmest of crescents. And since half the sky was overcast, they weren’t getting much starlight, either.

  They kept walking in the direction the horses had gone, stepping around sage brush. As they walked up and down inclines of rock, Flynn kept apologizing for his boneheaded move. Then he felt Casey’s hand on his—at first a touch, then a clasp. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We have our coats. We have a blanket”—she held it up—“we have each other. Each other’s bodies. And it sure is gorgeous out here, isn’t it?”

  Which probably meant they were going to die. Flynn pictured it: the discovery of his skeleton in the clutches of another, his flesh picked off first by coyotes, then by turkey vultures. His children would hear about it and shake their heads: What was Daddy doing in the middle of the desert with a strange woman?

  They walked in silence, Flynn’s eyes adjusting, until it was so dark he couldn’t see anymore, no matter how wide he made his eyes, how intently he peered. It was completely different, the desert, than he had imagined. In the daylight there was more color, more life, with yellow and rust-colored rock instead of sand, vegetation somehow growing from the dry, rocky surface. But at nightfall, bitter cold—and starker, more austere.

  They heard the coyotes again, madly yipping, and Casey stopped walking. “I was hoping we’d see house lights by now,” she said. “If we’re too far off, we could bypass the ranch entirely.” Flynn stopped with her, even though he felt they should keep walking—even in the dark, if only to keep their blood circulating, or in case the caretakers of the ranch came looking for them. Hey, why hadn’t they hollered out for help?

  He inhaled and belted out a yell—then another, as loud as he could muster. Help! Hooooh! He stood waiting, holding his breath, as he felt Casey staring at him.

  When nothing—no sound at all—came back, he turned his attention to Casey’s plan, which was, apparently, to sleep in the desert. They had done so every night of their trip (in the Four Corners area, in Bryce Canyon after traveling through Monument Valley)—only now they wouldn’t be in an insulated sleeping bag inside a tent but out in the elements, exposed and vulnerable. He had never been in any situation, ever, even close to this—in so vast a land, so steeped in it as to be undetectable, a six-foot pole of flesh and bone in the chilling blackness of nowhere. He tried to work up an appropriate amount of terror, but there was also something else going on. Dear god, she’s right: what a big amazing land this is. Here he was, thirty-six years old, and he’d never known.

  Casey was pulling at brush, breaking off branches or tugging them out by their roots, and Flynn understood they would somehow be using these for warmth, so he got down on his knees, groping in the dark and yanking out brush with her, until they had formed a large mound. Then they came together, smelling of sweat and sage and juniper. He could see starlight reflected in her enlarged pupils, like a miniature cosmos he could get lost in.

  She told him to take off his coat, then began to unbutton his shirt.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  While camping, they had slept naked together in the sleeping bag, since according to Casey that was the best way to stay warm. And it had worked. But sleeping naked out in the open air? That was another story, especially with coyotes around. Casey explained that they needed to take off their clothes to let the aridity dry the sweat from them. “You don’t want to sleep in sweaty clothes,” she said. “That would be bad.” She draped his shirt over a juniper bush. “Plus,” she said, “you’re wearing all cotton. Not good.”

  While their clothes were drying, she said, they should make love on the blanket, so the heat from their bodies would keep them warm.

  Flynn began to protest, but what did he know? A New Yorker was going to tell a Western wilderness guide how to survive a frigid night in the desert?

  He made sure his wallet, with photographs of his children inside, was deep in his coat pocket before taking it off; then he pulled off his pants. Once he was naked, but for his socks, he shivered at first, but he breathed deeply and told himself it was all in his mind. Someone had once told him he needed to change the way he thought, and here was his opportunity. This was a new life he was starting, and there was, clearly, a different way of being out here.

  Casey laid out her clothes
on nearby bushes and led him to the blanket. They clutched at each other right away, their noses and lips cold, their breath warm. As they embraced, Flynn closed his eyes, conscious of his breathing, and after a while, his trembling ceased. Casey had a large frame, her weight about equal to his: he was long and thin, while she had strong legs, full breasts, and a Buddha belly. With her mouth on his neck, her breasts pressing into his ribs, and her hands rubbing his skin, he quickly warmed. As he was breathing her in, and as she swung her leg over his hips, Flynn imagined he felt the heat from their pulsing baby, the tiny homunculus giving him life.

  Afterwards Flynn, still in the wool socks Casey had bought him, went off to urinate, as Casey pulled on her clothing, now dry. She had been easy with him on their rocky bed, tender even—“We can’t sweat during this,” she’d said—and the whole thing was forcing Flynn to reconsider her. She was forthright and headstrong, that was true; and that drew him to her. But there was also something fragile about her, something that yearned for whatever it was he had to offer, whatever it was she saw in him that he didn’t see in himself. He was surprised he had anything a woman like her would want, but whatever it was, he would surely give it to her.

  He put on his clothes, which had indeed dried out. There was no longer even a hint of warmth in the air. Casey called out, telling him she had separated the brush into two piles, was lying down between them, and he should hurry. He found her by crawling forward and clasping her socked foot. She told him they needed to stuff their shirts with sage and juniper twigs, cover their torsos with their coats, lay the horse blanket over their legs and feet, and sleep with their hats on. After they did that, they piled the rest of the brush on top of their bodies, entombing themselves. They were poked and scratched, but as they held each other, their breath warm, Flynn breathed in the scent of horse sweat and pine, knowing he wouldn’t be cold for much longer.