Come In and Cover Me

by Gin Phillips

  “Fine,” she said, after maybe one minute of chewing. He stopped crunching, rolling the ice over his tongue. Although she hated it when he sucked the ice, too. She said she could hear it bumping against his teeth.

  “You said,” she started. She licked her lips and started again. “You said, ‘I love you, Esmeralda.’”

  He glanced at her, unamused. “Funny. That is not what I said.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seriously, what did I say?”

  “‘I love you, Justine’?”

  “I’m not joking, Ren. Something’s bothering you.”

  “‘Clementine’?” she tried again. “‘Lucille’?” She was smiling, but her eyes still slipped and slid toward him. He did not smile. He focused on the road. They drove on.

  “My head hurts,” she said.

  He looked over, and her eyes were closed.

  “My mother used to rub my temples like this.” She lifted her hands and demonstrated. “She said the best thing was to go into a dark room and close your eyes. And if that didn’t make it better, get in a cool bath. She would make me lemon tea while I was in the bath, but it had juice in it, too. Orange juice, or maybe apple. Last year I had a terrible migraine, the first I ever had, and I went through all that stuff she told me to do. But I couldn’t remember what was in the tea. I guess it didn’t matter—I couldn’t have gone shopping for ingredients, anyway. But I’d like to have the recipe. It would make me feel better.”

  She opened her eyes. Silas didn’t want to say anything, hoping if she forgot he was there, she would keep talking. She didn’t.

  “Ask her,” he said.

  “She said to have a spoon of honey, too,” she continued. “She thought honey was good for everything.”

  “Parents know things like that,” he said. “My dad always said for a headache you should dunk your head in a sink full of ice and water.”

  Silas had dunked more than his head in icy water. When he was eleven, the newspaper proclaimed January 4 to be the coldest day in a hundred years in Silver City, New Mexico. The creek by the house froze still and hard. Silas and Alex started by tapping a toe on the ice, pressing gently. The surface stayed smooth and opaque. They slowly shifted more and more weight onto their feet. Then they began creeping, inch by inch, onto the smooth expanse. Finally they concluded that the creek had frozen solid.

  This led to a new game. The boys would take turns getting a running start and throwing as much weight onto the ice as possible. It was a long jump onto the ice, a tumbling pass. It was a test of brute force. They would see what it took to break open this unnaturally solid thing. They would crack it open and see its insides. (His memories of Alex always came back to action and doing. There didn’t seem to be any memories of talking, no late nights huddled under the covers, whispering or plotting. His brother had their father’s miserliness with words. Even now, Silas and Alex discussed sports, watched sports, and occasionally—with knees and backs permitting—played sports. Alex did not have heartfelt conversations. Silas remembered wanting to sometimes crack open Alex or their father, not to hurt them but just to see what they were thinking, to know what thoughts churned around inside their heads, never to be released. He craved words and stories and talking and laughter, and his mother, at least, helped fill the silence of the house.)

  Both brothers soon forgot it was even conceivable for the ice to break. Silas found large, flat rocks and tied them onto the bottom of his sneakers with his shoelaces. He stomped across the ice. Alex retrieved a hammer from their father’s off-limits tool shed, but the hammer barely nicked the gray glass of the creek. (Silas wondered now what Alex remembered of that day. He felt sure that if he asked him, Alex would talk about the bitter cold and the satisfying thwack of the hammer against the ice and how much he had wanted to beat Silas. Silas wondered why they had been so drawn to breaking things, why games were always about crashing and banging and knocking things—including themselves—to the ground. He could remember many times as an adult when the sight of frozen bodies of water had been blindingly beautiful, but he remembered no sense of the creek’s beauty or any sense of the magic of the snow. He remembered wanting to blast snowballs against the walls of the house. Maybe an appreciation of beauty came along with puberty, timed with facial hair and the smell of sweat. But even now, these were the kinds of thoughts that his brother—and father, too?—would surely never have.)

  They grew tired of the game and drifted back to the house. The next day, Silas was outside by himself; Alex had gone to town with their mother. Their father was chopping cottonwood for the fire, so Silas wandered down to the water by himself. It was early afternoon, and the sun was bright. The cold air bit into his skin, and the creek appeared solid. He followed its mild twists and turns, looking for signs of fish or other animals trapped in the ice. He had visions of fish stuck mid-swim, of water snakes frozen in S-formations. But he saw nothing other than clouded gray. When he stopped walking, he was nearly a mile from the house, far from the spot where he and Alex had played the day before. With no other entertainment presenting itself, he decided to have another go at the creek. As he left the ground, pushing off from the bank, his foot slid onto the ice. He knew he was in trouble then—he could feel that the ice had some give to it—but he was already in motion, in the air. He landed in the middle of the creek, and the ice gave way with a crack. There was the slightest pause, and then he was falling, like one of those clowns at the fair who plunge into a barrel of water when a baseball hits the right target.

  He lost his breath to the cold, even with his head still above water. Then he was completely underwater, unable to move, feeling his feet hit bottom. He managed to push off, out of reflex, and his head broke the surface. It was not a deep creek, and he could surely stand up, but he couldn’t make his feet and legs work. Burning, burning cold. He took a long second to try to breathe, only his face above the water. Then he fought his way out. He had a few feet to get to the creek bank, and the ice broke away from his hands when he tried to boost himself onto it. So he whacked at it with numb hands, knocking chunks away as he stepped heavily through the water, his jeans heavy weights. His could hear his teeth.

  At the bank, he heaved himself out and lay sprawled on the dirt and weeds and pebbles. He was soaked, and he suspected the strands of his hair were starting to freeze. The day before, it had hit twenty degrees—it must be closer to thirty degrees now. Right around freezing, since the sun had thawed out the creek. But he thought he might not be able to walk back to the house. He could barely move, his skin was blue-tinged, and his shivering made it difficult to think.

  As he inhaled, he could feel a sheet of ice forming on the inside of his throat, spreading down to his lungs.

  Still, because there was no choice, he stood up. He took one step and then another, hunched over slightly, arms wrapped around himself. He tried to jog, to warm up, but he didn’t have enough coordination for it. He stuck his fingers in his armpits and took short, measured steps. He tripped over a log and fell down, slicing his right palm, barely able to get his hands out so he wouldn’t land on his face.

  He found a rhythm and tried to think about anything but the cold. His parents would be panicked. They would rush him to the hospital, and that would be where the news cameras would find him. His father would hug him and ruffle his hair like Silas remembered from when he was very small. His father would probably say how proud he was, especially if there were newspaper headlines. He wondered if they would be able to get him on the six-o’clock news that night. He imagined telling the whole story to his teacher, Miss Whisenhut, who had blue eyes and black hair to her waist. He would tell her how he couldn’t feel his fingers or his feet and how he thought his lips had frozen shut. He imagined Miss Whisenhut’s arm around him and the curve of her breast possibly brushing against his head.

  There—his house. The plain brown walls of it and the dirt d
riveway. He saw his father, still chopping wood. He nearly laughed with relief. He made the last few steps to his father, close enough to feel the warmth rising off his father’s wide back.

  His father looked up from the wood. He did not put down the ax.

  “Fall in?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Better hurry with your shower. Your mother’ll need help with the groceries.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Take your shoes off before you go inside.”

  “Yessir.”

  Silas walked into the house without another word. He took a shower, changed his clothes, and was rubbing a towel over his hair when his mother pulled into the driveway. He told her about the creek, but in his story, the fall through the ice and the walk home were only amusing things. He said he had imagined newspaper headlines: “Boy Narrowly Escapes Frozen Death” or “Boy Saves Own Life with Death-Defying Trek.” His mother laughed, which was what he’d intended. Once the warm water had steamed away the chill from his skin and his blood and his bones, he could see that no one should brag about falling into a thawed-out creek. There was nothing heroic to it. It had been stupid and childish, and he had seen that written across his father’s face. He hated to see the onset of his father’s disapproval—he could see the lines forming, the forehead wrinkling and narrowing of the eyes and tightening of the mouth, before any of those small shifts had even taken place. He waited for the displeasure to take shape.

  His father was a capable man whom other people flocked to if they needed help with tools or equipment, but he was an unflinching pragmatist. When it was time to kill the lambs, Silas’s father used a pocketknife. He could lift a two-hundred-pound calf without making a sound. To treat poison ivy, he skimmed a razor across the entire length of his leg, cutting the top off the rash, then poured bleach over the open wounds. He expected competence from his sons, second only to his expectation of good judgment. “You’ll grow up, and you’ll be a good man or a bad man,” his father had said. “There’s nothing in the middle.” Silas very much did not want to be a bad man.

  He and Alex could both fish by the time they were six, and within a year or two after that, they could recognize the tracks of almost any animal that happened across the winding dirt driveway. Silas could change a tire long before he could drive. His father drilled him on multiplication tables and spelling words, emphasized the importance of saying “Please” and “Thank you” and helping their mother with chores.

  His mother was just as competent as his father—she could wrap tamales as she made a pot of coffee, all the while asking just the right questions about Silas’s homework assignments—but she had a joy about her. She made Silas’s father laugh, a loud, coughing sound that seemed to surprise him each time it escaped from his mouth. Once his father laughed so hard he sprayed milk all over the platters of fried eggs and bacon and tortillas, and Silas’s mother started breakfast over again.

  Silas wanted to tell Ren these childhood stories, but the stories never came out as he hoped. They were so clear in his head, but they changed when they spilled out into the air. He would intend to capture his father’s strength and goodness, but instead the stories captured something cold in the man, something Silas did not recognize. These stories of slaughtered animals and callused palms made people wince. Still, he could tell them to Ren. He could tell her any number of things. But he found that what he most wanted was for her to tell him something. Anything. For her to let her stories and her fears and whatever was bothering her at this very second spill out into the air. All she was giving him was ghosts. He needed something more substantial.

  They were in the foothills of the Piños Altos Mountains, up above six thousand feet. They’d driven through Silver City half an hour ago, and since then, they’d seen only ranch land in the foreground and mountains in the distance. The asphalt highway had given way to a gravel road, and they hadn’t seen another truck for miles.

  After half an hour of gravel, Ren pointed to a blue sign nailed to a gatepost.

  “Turn there,” she said. “Lanark Ranch.”

  The land dipped and rose, with few trees, few houses, and endless blowing grass. They passed through two green iron gates with “Do Not Enter” signs, and when they came to a third, Ren gnawed her lip for a moment and peered across the fields. The rise and fall of the hills obscured the view. A small copse of juniper and scrub oaks, plus a few ash trees, paralleled a long line of barbed wire to their right.

  Ren announced that they wouldn’t be able to get the truck any closer to the site, so they pulled under the shade of a decent-sized oak and grabbed what they could easily carry. They walked along a rough path cut through the trees, passing close to the barbed wire and the juniper fence posts. They each carried a backpack and a duffel bag of supplies. Tiny talons from catclaw shrubs grabbed at the bags, at clothing, at the backs of their hands. They stepped over a single pile of hay-crusted horse droppings, and passed a tall dead yucca plant stooping like a sad long-haired woman. Already Silas could hear Crow Creek below them, a giddy sound with bubbling exclamations. It reminded him of high school girls during lunch period.

  A flock of birds burst from undergrowth on the other side of the barbed wire, and Ren jumped, actually lifted both her feet off the ground, as she spun around.

  “What is the matter with you?” snapped Silas.

  “Maybe too much coffee,” she said, looking at her feet.

  “Right,” he said.

  When they came out of the woods, they were on a wide, flat plateau a few hundred feet above the water. It looked like it had once been good grazing land, but now it held only a few juniper and piñon and some particularly scraggly mesquite. The flat land dropped off suddenly, offering a view of the creek below. A trail wound down to the bank, through shrubs and cacti and stubby grasses.

  Peering down, Silas could see the river terraces descending to the water. Grassy slopes and sandstone cliffs rose on the other side of the creek—despite its enthusiastic chatter, it was only a thin ribbon surrounded by sand and gravel and hopeful trees. The view was much better across the water: The willows and sycamores had turned white-silver in the afternoon sun, a fringe rising up against the vertical rock wall Silas faced. The rock was layered sandstone, the same distinctive outcroppings—Gila Conglomerate, the geologists called it. Some lips and ledges of it supported an occasional prickly pear or catclaw. From a distance the rock rippled, fluid as the water that had carved it. The sandstone cliff gave way to grassy, juniper-dotted slopes to the north, and farther along there was an impressive volcanic knob topping one peak.

  Ren’s feet crunched over the pebbles behind him, and he felt her hand at his waist.

  “Turtle Rock,” she said, nodding at the volcanic knob. He could see why the name had stuck. “People say the Apache kept the women and children up there when they went raiding.”

  Silas stepped away from her hand. They followed the perimeter of the cliff until they spotted where the ledge had buckled. The collapse had uncovered a row of walls—four walls, so at least two rooms—that had been buried completely. It was too late to set up equipment and start measurements. They began setting up camp before the sun set.

  The process did not go as smoothly as they had hoped. The ground was hard and resistant to the tent pegs. One of the pegs was missing altogether, though they found a large rock to use as an anchor. And when Silas reached for his lighter, his pocket was empty. He decided it must have fallen out somewhere along the hike to or from the truck. A quick search turned up an old pack of matches in his jacket pocket. He left Ren unrolling the sleeping bags while he went searching for dead wood for the fire.

  More out of curiosity than efficiency, he decided to try the trail down to the creek. He jogged the first few nearly vertical steps; then the ground flattened slightly. For the first few yards, he was on solid bedrock. Volcanic sandstone, he thought. The Gila Wild
erness was once a huge volcanic cauldron—hot springs were still bubbling up all over the place. Eventually waters washed all the volcanic ash and debris down into what became the creek bed.

  The bedrock gave way to more greenery as he worked his way down—the shrubs grew thicker, and he could see tall spears of yucca off to his right. He enjoyed the steep walk, enjoyed noting the level of each terrace, the change in the flora around him. He would be glad to start hacking at the earth tomorrow. He was ready to feel tools in his hand, to stretch a string taut for a measurement, to sketch a meter-by-meter map. Though he hadn’t said anything to Ren, he was ready to be out of her house. He was ready to get away from her dining room table and his laptop. He had started to feel ungrounded in her space, especially as she put in full days at the museum and he drifted through her house while she was gone. He could forget at times, when he was comfortably settled into a routine of sifting through dirt and studying outcroppings of stone and scrubbing at sherds with a toothbrush, that it was possible to feel ill at ease or out of place. Not that he didn’t make mistakes in the field. Not that he didn’t guess wrong or miss connections sometimes. But he always fit. He knew the right steps. There was a flow and an order to things, and he was in it and a part of it, like the yellow lichen growing on the rock just in front of his foot or the willows below, drinking from the creek. When he was on-site, he felt only sureness.

  Ren was not as easy, not as readable as a wall of rock or the layers of a trash heap. He lay next to her at night, but there was still this wide expanse of open sand and gravel between them, just as there had been in the early days of the canyon. The last few days had deepened this feeling of separation, but the separateness had been there all along. He had grown more and more aware of it. He did not know how to bridge it.