by Gin Phillips
In that moment of calculation, the woman reached the top of the ladder, the bottoms of her feet coated with dust. She stepped onto the roof and everything vanished.
Back to nothing but flat land and shrubs and lines of stones on the ground.
Ren walked to where the woman had reached for the ladder. She stood on one of the stones that had formed the wall. She felt slightly dizzy.
“Ready?” asked Silas from behind her. “It’ll be dark soon.”
She turned, and he saw something on her face.
“What?” he said.
“Have you found any macaw feathers here?” she asked. Casually, she hoped, although she was aware that the question was bizarre.
“No.”
She took a breath and pointed to her feet. “I’d like to open up this room.”
She could hear Ed’s voice and Paul’s laughter headed in their direction. She waited.
“You saw something, didn’t you?” Silas asked.
She swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“I assume you saw something—or found something—on the surface that caught your attention. Show me.”
They were both standing still, feet slightly apart, waiting for her answer, when Paul and Ed found them.
“Ready?” asked Ed. His T-shirt read “I Make Stuff Up.”
Ren still didn’t say anything.
“I need someone to hold the tarp and even up the shadow if I’m gonna take this photo,” added Ed. “The wind’s really picked up.”
“I’ll hold the tarp,” said Silas, shrugging. “Then I want you guys to give us a hand for the rest of the afternoon. Ren wants to see how much of this room we can take down.”
She moved the tools and their backpacks to the other room while Silas and Paul wrestled with the tarp in the wind, and Ed tried to catch the right light. The tarp kept billowing, letting sunlight into the shadows exactly where the hearth lay, ruining the shot.
The rustle of the tarp quieted, and Ren felt Silas behind her again.
“I don’t have any problem with going with your gut,” he said. “We’ve got the entire canyon and the entire history of existence to work with—you need a little gut to find what you’re looking for. This room’s as good as any other.”
“I could be wrong,” she said. Even as she said it, she pictured the feathers attached to the dark pelt and knew that she was not.
“Sure you could,” said Silas. She couldn’t help but notice that he was staying several inches away from her. He hadn’t joked, hadn’t smiled, hadn’t given her even a sideways look that hinted at the memory of skin against skin. He was being completely professional. That was good, she told herself.
Paul was nearly as efficient with the pick as Silas was, and dirt flew as the ground dropped by inches. They checked at each level, looking for signs of artifacts, but the first forty centimeters went quickly. When the number of sherds increased—finally, they’d reached the dirt that had been lived in and lain in and worked in—they switched to trowels.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” asked Paul. “I know Silas wants pieces of corn. But I don’t get the feeling we’re looking for corn.”
“No, I’m the corn guy. She’s onto something else,” Silas said, face totally hidden by the shadow of his hat’s brim. Finding two pieces of corncob in an ash pit the week before had been like striking gold. Unlike wood, which could be collected and burned long after it was dead, corn plants lived for only a year. Their carbon traces could be analyzed more reliably. Charcoal, corn, the right kind of tree rings—those would get him within a couple of years of a specific date of occupation. The real story of the canyon would be told by bits of corn.
“I’m looking for feathers,” said Ren. “Maybe a feather apron.”
“Well, that’s specific,” said Ed.
“Yes, it is,” said Silas. He wrinkled his forehead—he had one vertical line between his eyebrows—but he didn’t seem to be frowning at her. More like he was trying to read very small print.
She didn’t want to lie. She could just say she saw a small bit of feather, maybe, right at the surface, mostly decomposed, and it blew away before she could look at it. She could say she thought she saw something—anything, really—and maybe that would be enough to buy her time. Maybe they would just hit something soon and she wouldn’t have to say anything at all.
“She gets feelings sometimes,” said Ed, before she could speak. “That’s how it works.”
Maybe Silas would have said something else, but Paul spoke first. “How would feathers last this long?”
“They’re slow to decompose,” said Ren quickly, encouraging the thread of conversation. “But we’d have to get lucky.”
“Like a roof cave-in or a piece of pottery collapsed over the feathers,” added Ed. He was working with just his hands, running his gloves over a pile of loose dirt. “So the space under it would be protected, and you have little treasure troves of sealed-off space. Little time capsules.”
Ren’s fingers twitched, watching Paul and Silas in the dirt. Every swipe of their hands, every scrape of the trowel, could leave them holding her apron. She did think there was an apron. It could be something else, but the image that had stayed etched in her mind was of that apron. She thought that must mean something.
“Can I switch out with you?” she asked Paul.
The light had started to fade, and she told everyone else they could stop and leave her to dig by herself, but they all stayed with her. And just when she thought they would have to call it a day or risk being stuck on the mountain in the dark, she saw a flash of pale red in the dirt.
She reached for the whisk broom. It could even make dirt interesting, brushing out lovely islands and continents from nothingness. The broom could sometimes let you see anything you wanted to see, but she was not hallucinating now. A piece of the adobe roof had fallen over this red bit of feather. It was a protected space, just as she had wished for, just as Ed had described, and she could see Ed and Silas exchange a look.
She made short, firm strokes, brushing away until the outline of the adobe fragments was clear, with a small bit of feather protruding. She tossed the whisk broom off to the side and lifted the pieces of roof. The frail, wispy tips of the feathers sprang into the open air for the first time in centuries. The garment wasn’t whole, but six feathers were lying together, some still attached by what had once been buckskin straps. The pelt the straps had hung from was partly decomposed, with a few patches of disintegrating fur visible through the dirt.
“Rabbit, I think,” Silas said from behind her.
They did not have time to uncover the apron fully, and none of them wanted to risk damaging the find. They barely had time to speak. They covered the apron with a few shovelfuls of dirt for protection from the elements, anchored the tarp over the hole, and headed back down the mountain. All of them were too focused on their footing in the near dark to discuss what they’d found.
“Who would wear that?” asked Paul, when they were back on flat ground. “I mean, was it actually worn?”
“Maybe something ceremonial,” said Ed. “Ritualistic.”
“Maybe,” said Ren.
She did not want to say anything about the apron or the woman until she could sort her own thoughts. Macaws were certainly ceremonial. Images on Mimbres ceramics showed women holding the birds, sometimes with a curved stick presumably of some procedural or training importance. Women could have trained the birds, cared for the birds, handled the birds in spiritual observances. A single feather was considered a sign of prestige in burials, on the same level with turquoise or shells or copper bells. To wear macaw feathers was surely a mark of importance, of accomplishment, of skill or uniqueness.
Who was this woman who clothed herself in such importance?
And where was the artist?
Ren had not come here to find this straight-shouldered woman striding around the canyon, leaving wide-eyed boys in her wake. She had come here to find a woman who painted ceramics.
Ceramics filled with parrots.
The sun dropped out of the sky just as they all stepped off the slope and onto the main road. An early owl hooted, close by. They scattered when they reached the screened porch, headed for showers and toilets and changes of clothes.
Propping her flashlight against a wooden shelf, Ren stepped into the outdoor shower first. The concrete floor had soaked up the day’s heat, and she curled her toes against the rough surface. The pine walls came up to her nose, leaving a clear view of the house, the yard and the path to the shower, and the mountains. The floor was cooling, slick with water, and her skin was cooling as well. She closed her eyes, leaning forward and bracing her hands on the shower wall, the lukewarm water hitting her shoulders, her arms, her face. When the chill bumps started rising on her arms, she adjusted the temperature knobs and got down to the serious business of cleaning. The water ran brown, opaque, down the drain. Digging left a coat of grime—gray dust covered her skin and her hair, had worked its way into her nostrils and ears and the corners of her eyes. She could taste it, dry and bitter, in her throat.
She washed her hair twice, and her eyes slid closed again as she ran her fingers along her scalp, sluicing out the water. When she opened her eyes, she saw Silas walking toward her, headed toward the sink by the shower. She rinsed once more, and when she opened her eyes again, he was turning on the sink faucet.
“Feel good?” he asked, looking straight at the sink. He filled his hands with water and splashed his face.
“Good,” she said.
“You ready to talk?” he asked.
“Talk?”
“You can parrot things back to me all you want—no pun intended—and I’m still going to ask you questions.”
It was difficult, Ren thought, holding a serious conversation while naked, separated from him by a pine wall. She wondered if he could see only her eyes or if the view included her whole face or bare shoulders.
“Questions?” she said.
“Funny.”
“I’ll talk, Silas,” she said. “I’ll answer your questions, for whatever good it does. I’ll come find you after I’ve put my clothes on.”
“Clothes?” he asked.
She watched him leave as she wrapped a towel around her hair. He would ask her about the feather apron, and she would tell him about the parrot woman. He would not believe her because seeing ghosts was crazy. But she would still tell him the truth, because it was the only explanation she had, and some part of her—a part she didn’t want to probe too much—wanted to share it with him. She would tell him the truth about the parrot woman. Other things she would keep to herself.
Sometimes her mother used to send Scott to wake her, and that was always less pleasant than her mother’s tentative “Good morning” from the bottom of the stairs. On the morning of the accident, her mother called once, twice, three times—a hint of a threat in the final call—before Ren rolled out of bed, landing on her knees. It was October 5, 1984, the first date ever push-pinned into her brain instead of floating away like all the days before it. It was two months before she turned thirteen. She rested her head on the edge of the bed. One eye open, the other one closed. She thought of it as half sleeping. She pushed herself to her feet finally, stumped to the bathroom, and clomped down the stairs to the kitchen a few minutes later. She heard the Sex Pistols screaming in Scott’s room as she passed it.
“You left your music on,” she said to him as she walked past the kitchen table. He was slumped over his cereal.
“No, I didn’t,” he said.
“Did. I heard it.”
“You were dreaming.”
“Mom, he left his music on.”
Her mother pretended not to hear her.
They ate cereal silently. She was pouring a second bowl when he stood and grabbed his book bag, kissing their mother’s cheek. He said “Bye” to them all as the door swung shut behind him, and she didn’t answer, although her mother and father did. She heard the door slam. She did not see him get in his car, arrange his book bag on the front seat, or drive away. But she knew he must have done those things.
That afternoon, she didn’t see his car when she walked up the driveway. That was normal: He usually hung around with his friends after school and got back home long after the bus dropped her off at the end of the block. She opened the front door and walked into the den to see both her parents sitting on the couch. They weren’t touching at all. Her father sat perfectly straight, both feet on the floor, his chin touching his chest. Her mother had her hair twisted up like she wore it for work, but she had on jeans. Her mascara was smeared down her cheeks. They were slow to look up when Ren asked why her father was home so early.
When they did look at her, she could see the mascara tracks went all the way to the collar of her mother’s shirt. She had the sudden thought that one of them had cancer. Her music teacher had cancer the year before and wore a butterfly scarf around her head. Her parents must have planned to tell her about the cancer together, she thought, but it didn’t make sense that they would tell her separately from Scott.
“We have to tell you something, honey,” her mother said. “Come over here and sit with us.”
Ren watched her mother’s wet face and thought her father probably had the cancer.
When she got to the sofa and sat on the very edge, her mother laid her hand on Ren’s head, too heavily, oppressively. Ren fought a flinch. Her mother didn’t say anything, just left her heavy hand on Ren’s skull.
“Harold,” she said finally.
Ren heard her father swallow and felt the couch shift as he leaned toward her. “It’s Scott,” he said. “He had a bad accident on the way to school.”
She was so surprised she couldn’t make her brain work. They should be at the hospital if Scott had an accident.
Her father put his hand on her shoulder, and she slumped with the weight of both parents’ hands. She wanted to stand. She did not move.
“He was. He was.” Her father started and stopped. A third time: “He was. He never felt anything probably. He just went to sleep and never woke up. The other car ran a red light and hit him and it was very, very fast.”
He kept talking, but the sleep part confused her.
“Is Scott dead?” she asked.
Her mother started crying, and her father said “shhhhh,” but Ren didn’t know which one of them he meant.
“He is,” Ren said, answering her own question softly, in case her father had been talking to her.
People came over that afternoon and night—aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends from church. Some handed over things wrapped in tinfoil and then left, but some stayed. Her grandfather wanted to build a fire, because fires were comforting, even though it wasn’t cold enough. Her grandmother dusted the shelves.
Her mother kept her hands on Ren for a long time. On her head, on her back, through the crook of her elbow. She escaped the weight of her mother’s hand eventually. When she walked to her bedroom, she could hear the whir of Scott’s tape player running wordlessly. She had told him so. She considered turning it off but didn’t.
They had left her at school all day thinking he was still alive.
That night her grandmother sat on the edge of Ren’s bed and pulled up the blankets. Her grandmother had squishy, wormlike veins on the tops of her hands that Ren liked to flatten—they sprang back quick as sponges. She experimented with the veins as her grandmother told her that it always took time for people to understand when someone was gone. She said that Ren’s feelings were frozen and they would start to thaw out later. She heard her grandmother whisper to her mother at the doorway, “She doesn’t understand. She doesn
’t know it’s real yet.”
It did not feel real. It was not a death—it was a vanishing. She never saw his car again. She never saw his book bag again. They didn’t think she should go to the funeral, and she believed them when they said she would feel better if she remembered Scott alive instead of remembering his coffin. During the funeral she stayed with Allison Shum and played Frogger.
For a little while Scott’s room remained with its treasure trove of music, and she would visit the treasure. She liked to look at Born to Run: Scott had been trying to do that Springsteen thing with his hair for a year, and he’d never gotten close. His hair was perfectly straight and always fell neatly into place no matter how much he wanted it wild and disheveled and curly. She had told him he needed to use curlers, and he wouldn’t, but she thought they should have curled his hair for the funeral, because he would have loved for everybody to remember him looking like Springsteen. She wished she had thought to tell her mother that.
She couldn’t believe that a plastic cassette tape could last longer than a human being.
They did not like finding her in his room. It was not healthy, they said. It was a few weeks, a month, maybe, after the accident—“the accident,” that was what her parents said when they spoke of it at all—when they found her there for the last time. She heard them whispering in the hall. The next day her mother carried empty boxes and garbage bags into Scott’s room, and bit by bit his room was broken down. The boxes and bags with bits of his room in them were carried to the attic. The next day, a large white truck came and collected his bedroom furniture. It would go to people who needed it, her mother said. Her father came home with a desk the next day, and Scott’s room became an office. A strange, bare office that no one ever worked in. There were no pictures on the wall. There was a typewriter on the small wooden desk. Next to the desk, a round end table tilted to one side. The wheels of the desk chair snagged in the carpet and would not roll.
So Scott’s room vanished. They gave her his tapes in three big boxes. All the little hard cases, tapping and sliding against each other, unimaginable riches. She had never wanted anything more than she wanted Scott’s music. They told her she could sort through them and keep the ones she wanted, but she couldn’t stand to throw out a single one. She spent an entire afternoon unpacking them and arranging them into towers, skyscrapers of cassettes lining her wall just as they had lined Scott’s.