Picnic in the Ruins

by Todd Robert Petersen

  Sophia looked down at the laptop to get her bearings, and when she looked up, she saw a raised hand. The man who raised it was slim, balding, wearing a fleece vest. He looked like the kind of person with an NPR travel mug and a Subaru. “But a park,” he said, “like this one, is just a museum in reverse, right? You aren’t taking these things anywhere, but you’re bringing all of us here to see them.”

  “That is a good summary,” Sophia said, realizing too late that she’d allowed the lid on Pandora’s box to be lifted. Her presentation had just become a Q&A. “The national parks have dual responsibilities. They are supposed to protect the resources for right now and make sure what’s available right now will be also available to people in the future. Some people call them the dueling mandates.”

  “Like dueling banjos,” somebody called out. In the murmur that followed his joke, Sophia tried to gather the group’s attention back.

  “Does that make sense?” she said to the NPR man, who nodded, sort of. She went on. “For many years these sites were plundered by the people who settled here, and ‘settled’ isn’t really the right word. They took what they wanted, destroyed much of it outright, saved a little, sold the rest. They erased the people who were here. Now it’s impossible to know what really happened, what it was really like. Because it is not our history, what we are able to show you is inaccurate.”

  Another hand went up. He looked European, with a sweatshirt tied around his shoulders. He didn’t wait to be called on. Instead, he stood and spoke. “Who owns history, then?” he asked in a German accent. “Is it the people of the present day or the people of the past? This is a question I often ask myself, and the more I think about it, the more I am unsure. German people are enchanted with the American Indian, and these western lands, but perhaps we love something that no longer exists. I’m sorry if this is an unhelpful question. Perhaps it is not even a question at all.”

  Sophia felt the room narrow. This was what she secretly hoped her digression might open up. His question was the key to her work, and she loved how he put it so simply.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Reinhardt,” he said.

  “Reinhardt, I don’t know if I have an answer, but a good archeologist is always asking herself that question. The answer depends on so many things.”

  “I am a physician, so I lack the necessary training to ask myself this as a professional. But I pursue these things as a hobby. I study the American Indian only as an amateur, as a lover of such things. I will take my answer from this chair. I did not mean to create a distraction.” He sat down and tilted his head slightly to one side.

  As Sophia began to formulate her answer, another hand shot up. It was a man with a giant red maple leaf on his shirt. He didn’t wait to be called on either. “A guy at work says Indians came from spaceships that crashed, like, ten thousand years ago. They just got stuck here. He says when they all disappeared it’s because that’s when the rescue ships came.”

  “Oh, don’t. Please don’t say things like that. First off, they didn’t just disappear. Second, it’s already hard enough—”

  “You don’t really think we’re the only intelligent life forms in the universe,” the man replied. There was some laughter, and Sophia was furious that he had stolen the room. Her jaw clenched, and everything seemed to get louder.

  Just as Sophia was about to launch her counterattack, the German spoke again without rising. “Perhaps there are no intelligent life forms anywhere.” The audience laughed, and the man waited for it to grow quiet again. “But in reality, given the immensity of space, the chances of us existing in the same small window of time as other intelligent life is immeasurably small. That doesn’t even factor in the time delay of such cosmic distances.”

  “Look,” the maple leaf guy said, “the U.S. Navy has seen UFOs. They’ve got pictures.”

  Reinhardt smiled and shrugged.

  From another corner of the room a man’s voice called out. She couldn’t see his face. “They came across the land bridge from Russia.”

  “Okay,” Sophia said, “that may not be true either. It’s just one story and it’s not set in stone. Genetic data is showing us other possibilities—”

  Another hand went up. It was a woman, finally. Her jacket matched the one her husband next to her was wearing. “Do you know anything about the man from Kanab who killed himself? They say his house was a kind of museum. How does he fit into all of this? Nobody gets to see his stuff.”

  Sophia was advancing through her slides to get to the one that outlined the main points of the Antiquities Act of 1906. People in the audience began talking back and forth. Soon there was a rising, confounding cacophony of languages. When she came to the slide she was looking for, she had clicked too many times, overshot it, and had to back up. As she did, a Korean man, who had been sitting quietly through the presentation next to his wife, sat up straight in his chair on the aisle. His eyes went wide with alarm as he gasped, tipped forward, and fell. The people around him moved away as he hit the floor. His wife knelt immediately at his side and looked around pleading for help in her language. Sophia couldn’t see what was going on, but she began to run for the door to get help.

  “Let me through. Let me through,” said Reinhardt. “Clear the way.” He knelt and checked the man’s breathing and pulse, then looked at Sophia, held up two fingers, and pointed to his eyes. “You. I believe he is in cardiac arrest. Call for help, then come back here. If there is a defibrillator in this lodge, please bring it back.”

  Sophia rushed from the room and wove through the crowded corridor. She cut the line at the front desk, which triggered a series of disgruntled complaints. “We’ve got a heart attack in the auditorium. He looks older. I didn’t get a good look, so I don’t have a description.”

  The desk clerk was young. Her name tag said SILVIA, HOMETOWN TRNAVA, SLOVAKIA. Sophia could see that the girl couldn’t process what she was saying. She reached over the desk and grabbed the phone, dialed the number, and called it in. When she was done, she handed the phone back to Silvia, who held it without hanging it up.

  “Do you know where a defibrillator is?” She pantomimed placing the paddles on a chest and the jolt that followed. Silvia’s face fell, and she started to panic. “Never mind,” Sophia said.

  She ran back to the auditorium and found the crowd gathered in a circle around the fallen man. The German doctor was on his knees performing CPR, singing softly to himself as he leaned into the compressions. It was the Bee Gees. “Stayin’ Alive.” After many strokes, he leaned down and gave two deep rescue breaths.

  Someone from the crowd called out: “They’re saying don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.”

  The doctor returned to his compressions. “Danke,” he said to his critic. “Physicians receive different training.” Then he returned to his song.

  A woman in a rhinestone shirt turned to her husband and asked, “Is he singing Saturday Night Fever?”

  Her husband shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t seen it in a long time.”

  “Do you think he should? I mean a man is dying right there. Maybe it’s tacky,” the woman replied.

  Someone standing next to Sophia said, “Lady, I think whoever does the CPR gets to pick the music.”

  The doctor continued to give compressions and rescue breaths. He checked the man’s pulse at regular intervals. Sophia heard the sirens and started pulling chairs aside to make a path. In a few minutes, the park EMTs burst into the room with a rolling stretcher. When the doctor saw them, he stood immediately and let them do their work.

  “I began CPR within ten seconds,” Reinhardt said. “He has a pulse, and he’s breathing on his own.”

  “We’ve got it,” one of the EMTs said.

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “Congratulations,” the other EMT said, shouldering past Reinhardt so he could transfer the man to the stretcher.

  Sophia looked around and stood on one of the chairs. “Ladies and gentlemen, could y
ou all please step to the side? Maybe just right up against the walls?”

  A tour guide wearing a Ranches, Relics, and Ruins T-shirt approached the EMTs with her arm around a frightened woman. She said, “This is that guy’s wife. You should take her with you. Mr. Kwon doesn’t speak any English. Do you?” she asked Mrs. Kwon, who nodded.

  “Only a little,” she said. “Not so much.”

  “They’re going to take you both to a hospital,” the tour guide said. The crowd parted, the EMTs left with the Kwons, and the space closed up behind.

  One of the other people in a tour group T-shirt said, “Okay, everybody, let’s break into our small groups and carry on. Make sure you have enough water.”

  Another tour group person said, “Don’t worry. Mr. Kwon will be just fine.”

  People who were not part of the group milled around for a while, then disappeared. A third tour group person said, “Before we go, a round of applause for Dr. Kupfer. He’s the hero of the day.” The remaining people clapped and cheered. Reinhardt looked up surprised, and he waved off the applause. As the room continued to empty, Reinhardt sat in one of the scattered chairs, and he hung his head.

  Eventually the only people left in the auditorium were Sophia and Reinhardt. As she shut down the projector and ejected her USB drive, she watched Reinhardt stand and walk around the place where Mr. Kwon had fallen. He took out a small bundle of sage tied in string. As he circled the area, he shook the bundle once in each of the four directions, then held the sage to his nose and breathed in deeply. He lowered his head and said a few words so quietly Sophia couldn’t hear them. When he was done, she said, “He’s probably going to be okay.”

  “Cardiac arrest is very serious.”

  “But you’re a doctor, right?”

  “A dermatologist.”

  “Oh,” Sophia said. “A doctor anyway. Nobody else knew what to do. I didn’t.”

  “I better continue on to the next event,” he said.

  “You’re on the tour?” Sophia asked.

  “Yes. It is a very bad one. I made a mistake. Their website was misleading.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Everything they show us here is a cartoon. Bright colors. Strings of flags. Hot dogs with ketchup. I would rather see something quiet and real and true, not always a Schauspiel.” He paused for a second. “Not always a . . . pageant, you know?”

  “It’s even hard for me to know what stories to tell, and I have an advanced degree,” Sophia said.

  Reinhardt tapped his fist against his sternum. “The stories should come from here.”

  Sophia did not agree with him on this point. The heart has a habit of falling in love with beautiful falsehoods, but this guy had just saved somebody’s life, so she gave him his moment. Instead of rebutting, she said, “Hey, there’s a lot of amazing stuff to see around here. Keep your eyes open.”

  “Danke,” the man said, shouldering his backpack. As he was leaving, Thad returned.

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “It’s not normally like this,” Thad said.

  “How could it be?”

  “They’re taking the Kwons to Cedar City. Regional is going to send you a link for an incident report, but you should sit down as soon as you can and take some notes. Details get slippery as you come down.”

  Sophia wandered out of the lodge and walked through the pines to the edge of the amphitheater. As she took in the intricate expanse, her phone buzzed. It was a VIP email notification from Paul. She tapped the email and it opened.

  Sophia, good news. I’ve got some days off this week that I have to take before the end of the fiscal year or I’ll lose them. I was wondering if I could interest you in an adventure. Do you remember that site we talked about when we were climbing a couple of weeks ago, a place called Swallow Valley? It’s the one that requires a technical approach. There’s a lot of scrambling and some pitches we’ll have to climb. Keeps most people out. Nothing too gnarly. I know you could do it. It would take two days to get there and back again. What do you think?

  She closed her eyes and tried not to smile as tourists passed her on either side. So, it was true, he did have plans, along with the presence of mind to share them. Climbing with him was the best thing she’d done since she got here. She didn’t know how she would do outside the gym, but it turned out she was good at it, and Paul was like nobody else. A flutter expanded inside her chest, and she calmly tried to gather it back up, but it billowed like a parachute, which made her all the more aware of each breath.

  She lifted her phone and wrote: Gnarly? Paul said corny things like that all the time, innocent, naïve, endearing things. He was one of the only men she’d ever met who seemed almost entirely without guile. She stared at the phone for a moment, thinking about what he’d do when he read her message, so she hit the delete key seven times and wrote:

  I will answer your call to adventure, but only if you promise to never, ever use the G-word again in my presence. I am ready to climb again. The harness and shoes you loaned me were fantastic. Send me a packing list for everything else and remind me to tell you about how I gave some guy a heart attack today.

  Day Four

  All the world’s a stage : Ninety-five in the shade : Let’s hope today is bullet free : The cowboy variety show

  Nick Scissors sat by himself in the breakfast room of his hotel. He had one of each kind of Danish separated on small Styrofoam plates: lemon, cherry, blueberry, and plain. He sipped his coffee and watched a Fox News story about the secretary of the interior saying he supported the president’s plans to help the United States become energy independent. While the story ran, he ate two of the Danishes, wiping his fingers with a paper napkin he took from a stack.

  At the table next to him, a couple worked out the itinerary of their vacation. Next stop, Zion National Park, then a day in St. George and down to Phoenix. The man pushed the map away and looked at his wife. “This would be a hell of a lot easier if there was a bridge across the Grand Canyon,” he said.

  In his mind, Scissors imagined a scene where he leaned over and said, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but there are already a number of bridges across the Colorado River. One at Page. The other at Boulder City.” Next, he had the man saying, “I’m talking about a bridge that goes right across the middle.” Or maybe the man would say, “In 1969 we put a man on the moon. Ever since then, we’ve been okay with being number two.” And then the man’s wife would interrupt, saying, “I’d never drive across that bridge. Can you think what something crazy like that would cost us in taxes?”

  And then the scene was over. The couple was eating in silence. Scissors looked back at Fox News, which had moved on to sports. He ate a third Danish and wrapped the fourth in a napkin and cleared his space. He rode the elevator to the third floor and let himself back into his room. The cardboard tube was on the bed and the maps were rolled out on top of each other and held down by two empty water glasses, the room’s travel iron, and a copy of the Gideon Bible.

  The room clock said 8:20, so he took a seat and started playing with a deck of cards. He shuffled, fanned, and flipped the cards. He cut them with one hand and tossed them effortlessly, so they spun like the edged facets of a kaleidoscope. With his hand cupped, he sent the cards through the air, gathered them, and repeated, then he took a card—the two of clubs—from the top of the deck and slipped it into the middle, then he shuffled the cards, tapped them square, and cut the deck, going right to the two of clubs again. He repeated this trick a half dozen times.

  When the clock read 8:29, he set down the cards and pulled a cell phone toward him. At 8:30 it buzzed. He answered it. A woman spoke without identifying herself. “One of my maps is missing. They’re a numbered set, and the fifth of seven isn’t there. It’s the map that shows the entire Swallow Valley site, including the approach. Did you send me all the photos?”

  “I’ll check.” Scissors got up and looked through each
one. She was right: he hadn’t seen them before, but there were small numbers in the lower left-hand corner of each map. “What do we do?” he asked.

  “Well, Nicholas, I’d like you to circle back.”

  “It’s a crime scene. I can’t just come and go.”

  “You’ll have to. At my back I always hear time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near. The oil and gas auctions are in a month. I have already put an entire machine in motion.”

  “You’ve been clear about that.”

  “None of this goes back into the bottle.”

  “Ms. Frangos, we should walk away from this one.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I might have to.”

  “If this mess gets back to me, you’re coming along for the ride.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “Retrieve the missing map, and you’re released from your obligations. You were made for this job. I’ve seen you vanish into thin air.”

  “That was on stage. This is different.”

  “All the world’s a stage, Mr. Scissors, so it’s too bad your career as an illusionist stalled out.”

  “Like you said, it was good training, and this is better pay.”

  Scissors parted the vertical blinds and looked across the valley at the massive CasaBlanca sign sticking up against the white haze and the jagged black mountains in the background. He opened up the napkin holding the last Danish from downstairs. He picked it up and took a bite.

  “Nicholas?” she asked. “Are you there?”

  “It’s difficult for me to measure the weight of my actions when I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not the villain in this story.”

  “Villains don’t usually cop to it, but whatever.”

  “You are a cog in a larger machine. What we are doing is bigger than those two pinheads, or either of us, really. Just get me the map. I will compensate you for this adjustment in the arrangements.”

  “If something goes wrong, Dumb and Dumber won’t be our patsies anymore. The whole idea from the start was to throw them under the bus. I worry they’ll do it to us.”