The Urn Carrier

by Chris Convissor

  A few heads stick up, and some kids her age wave.

  “Don’t use the trash bin,” they call out as they laugh and take off.

  She’s forgotten about it till this morning.

  There, in the bottom of the garbage bin, is a paper plate with the remains of about twenty self-rolled, cigarette butts.

  She removes the paper plate. She sticks her garbage bag in and takes the plate back to her campsite.

  She unrolls the golden tobacco and sniffs it. Bits of pot are mixed in. Dina would love this. She smiles and cleans the tobacco. She sifts the pot out of the twenty or so butts and comes up with enough for one nicely rolled joint. She doesn’t smoke, but she saves it for her meeting with Dina in California, before they are even close to crossing the US-Canadian border.

  On the top of the rocks she leaves a big thank you note and a sketch of the sunset the night before.

  THE DRIVE TO the Gila Cliff dwellings goes up and up and up through mountain pines and a long adventurous road. The truck seems to love being free of the camper and roars up the road like an un-tethered horse.

  Murphy’s pack actually has a dual purpose: it carries their water and his treats. Tessa has her own pack for extra water and food. She leashes Murphy in the shade as she begins exploring the caves. They’ve developed a ritual on their hikes and he seems to know the difference between a run and an exploring adventure. Where there’s a chance of crowds, they stay close. If it’s just a few people, Tessa leashes him in a shady spot and is not gone for very long or very far.

  She leaves him with water and enters the area to the Gila Cliffs dwellings.

  Once she is above and can see through the arch openings, she looks out over the vista and sees Murphy lying down and gazing up at her. She waves and he wags his tail. The huge dome arches are magnificent, and the series of kivas connected by walkways thrill her.

  She walks up some wooden steps and places her hand on a large smooth boulder and stops. The energy of generations of people putting their hands on this same boulder and moving on into the kiva jumps up through her palm and into her arm and shoulder. She looks down her arm and is instantly connected to the people who lived here a very long time ago and mysteriously vanished after taking the time to build these cathedral-like dwellings.

  “It’s a long way to go for water,” says an older woman behind her. She’s stocky and strongly built, her dark hair just beginning to grey, and her dark eyes smile. She indicates the river far below.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hold up the line.”

  A slimmer woman behind the stocky woman smiles and waves good-naturedly. “No worries. Enjoy the moment. I will.”

  The woman with the intense blue eyes and slightly auburn hair is aware of Tessa’s hand on that rock. They’re both wearing “Life is good” T-shirts, only the older woman’s T sleeves are cut off, so it’s more like a tank. Her arms look strong, like they are used to physical labor.

  “Awesome boulder, eh?” She pats it with affection.

  “Are you from Michigan?”

  “Yes I am. How could you tell?”

  “The eh?”

  The woman chuckles. “You too?”

  Tessa nods.

  “That your dog out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Handsome and well behaved. Wish we could have brought ours, but sometimes the parks are funny that way.”

  “Yes, he’s a big help to me.”

  Tessa climbs inside the kiva to make room for the women.

  The older woman closes her eyes and replicates Tessa’s posture with the rock. “Imagine all the generations who have ever touched this rock both present and beyond. I’ve waited far too long to feel this again.”

  The older woman opens her eyes and breathes a deep sigh, making room for the younger woman behind her. The woman with the auburn hair takes her time as Tessa and the older woman climb around and investigate further into the caves.

  “We just came from the Chiricahua Mountains. Before that, Sedona, Grand Canyon, and Zion.”

  “I’m supposed to go to the Grand Canyon and Zion.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “I’m spreading ashes,” Tessa whispers.

  She’s unsure why she trusts this woman, but she does. It’s obvious the two women are a couple, because when the other woman joins them, she grabs her hand and kisses her.

  “This is just the way you described it. Awesome.”

  The dark woman breaks into a wide smile in response.

  “I’m Alex and this is Ruth,” the older woman says.

  “Tessa . . . and Murphy.”

  “Nice to meet you. Which direction did you arrive from?”

  “South. I’m camping at City of Rocks.”

  “Just where we are headed. I was there long ago. Is it still primitive? No electricity?”

  “Just water.”

  “Is it over run with folks?”

  “No, surprisingly not.”

  “Maybe we’ll see you later.”

  “That would be great.”

  AT THE GILA River, just after she’s snapped a picture of the ashes for Dan Forsythe, Tessa stumbles over a pinyon pine cone. She picks it up and peruses its shape. The seeds inside. The heft of it.

  She smiles and puts the pine cone in her pack. And then looks around again.

  This is the picture. This is the place in the journal, Tessa is sure of it. A forked pinyon pine, looking exactly like the one in the picture. The flat rock just to the right of it. This is where Percy and Sadie made love, under a pine tree, along this river. Anyone could have stumbled upon them. The park literature clearly states the Gila Cliff dwellings became a national monument in 1907. Sadie and Percy arrived in 1954.

  “Wow. You two are much more daring than I’d ever be.”

  She smells her hands with the scent of the pine cone still on them. Murphy laps from the river, waiting for her. Tessa crouches, and he comes over to her.

  “If there really is no such thing as time, maybe Aunt Sadie and Uncle Percy are here. Maybe the Pueblans are still here. Whaddya think, Murphy?”

  Tessa refuses to refer to the inhabitants of this region by the Spanish name the park uses, Mogollan. The Pueblans were here before any Spanish Governor arrived.

  Murphy wags his long black, flag-like tail, grinning.

  “Yeah. I know. I can’t quite wrap my head around the whole quantum physics thing either. If our lives are just little worm lines in a bigger reality that we can’t see, then everybody is supposed to be existing at once.”

  Tessa closes her eyes. Everything seems still. For the briefest moment she sees Aunt Sadie and Uncle Percy in their young bodies, full of love and sweetness.

  She sighs deeply.

  Her phone rings and it’s her Mom FaceTiming her.

  Even though her mom’s eyes are dark, she is grinning from ear to ear.

  “Tessa! Fantastic news. Eli is going to be home by the time you return. Mr. Forsythe’s friend successfully argued for early release. I’m sorry I wasn’t available, but I went to the hearings and I didn’t want to call before I knew for sure.”

  “I’m just relieved everything is okay. Uncle Chuck is being okay?”

  “Oh, he’s not happy at all, but Mr. Forsythe has something over on him, that’s for sure.”

  “Mom, you won’t believe this.”

  Tessa flips the optics on the phone.

  “Aunt Sadie and Uncle Percy were at this exact same spot. I have an old black-and-white photo of them here.”

  She spares her mom the other details.

  “Isn’t that awesome?”

  “I’m so proud of you, darling. Are you sure you’re safe?”

  “It’s been so cool meeting new people. Everyone has been really kind. I think I’ve made some new friends.”

  “That’s beautiful, darling.” Her mom yawns. “I’m sorry, it’s been a complicated and chaotic couple of days, but I promise to speak with you again soon, okay, sweetie?”

&
nbsp; “You bet, Mom. I love you.”

  “Love you. Love you, Murphy.”

  Murphy, sitting right next to Tessa, wags his tail. Tessa takes his paw and waves bye to her mom.

  She drives into the City of Rocks campground and sees Ruth and Alex strolling hand in hand. A black dog with white on his chest and a funny shade of a smile on his face is walking next to them. They wave to her, and she stops.

  “Hungry?” Alex asks.

  “Famished.”

  “Judging from the color of your truck, I believe we camped two sites south of you. How ’bout coming over in a half hour? We’ll catch the sunset together.”

  “Thanks. What can I bring?”

  “Do you have any fruit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Awesome, it’s a date.”

  Before walking to dinner, Tessa pulls out the journal with the pinyon pine in the background. She hadn’t seen the edge of the water, but there it is. Her aunt had written:

  Some years the Gila will dry up completely, like when the German Prisoners of War tried to escape in 1944. Their plan was perfect. They even had made and tested a collapsible kayak right under their captor’s noses, but the Gila River in Arizona, when they arrived, was just a dried up rut that year. They were all eventually caught.

  This year the river is resounding and beautiful as Percy and I nap.

  Tessa’s imprint of the picture in her mind’s eye had been spot on, save for the river. If she hadn’t stumbled on the pine cone she never would have known. She never would have looked back and seen that specific sight. For a moment, she’s slipped into Sadie’s heart and soul as easily as slipping someone else’s shirt over her head and fitting it against the skin of her body.

  Does she dare hope this is the kind of love she shares with Dina? Do they?

  Chapter 15

  TESSA JUMPS UP to expressway 40 to 64 toward the Grand Canyon. Although Alex and Ruth had strongly recommended going to Moab and the Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, the closer she gets to San Francisco, the closer she is to Dina’s arrival. Her plans are to stay the course for her ash drops at the Grand Canyon and Zion.

  The Grand Canyon is much more than photographs can express, but then photographs cannot translate the air, or the depth. Tessa wonders, if all these professional photographers and artists have failed in capturing the Canyon’s essence, how can she even hope to try?

  Still, she waits for the dinner hour, when most trails become less hectic.

  She hikes to a lookout south of the fabled dimpled pyramids, a sight that can even be seen from space. A corridor of symmetrically eroded rock monuments marching like sentinels from the southwest to northeast.

  She quickly sketches in the rough shapes and adds the foreground of the protruding rock edifice on her side of the canyon with the canopy of the tree draping over her.

  She has never attempted 3D. Using this sketch as a blueprint, she can try different mediums. On the Internet, she’s seen examples of street artists creating 3D illusions on cement sidewalks. She will start with what she knows—charcoal, water color. Perhaps acrylic or oil.

  The next day, because of the heat and crowds, Tessa opts on leaving Murphy in the rig for a few hours while she hikes down into the canyon. The campground has full hookups and they’re in a good shady site. Murphy is safe and, after their morning run, he seems more than willing to stay in the coolness of the air conditioning in the rig.

  The rangers forewarn everyone that for whatever distance anyone hikes down, it will be twice as much to hike up. They advise taking twice as much water than what you think you need. Some people heading down double back right away, saying, “We need more water.”

  Mr. Forsythe’s instructions do not expect her to make it to the Colorado River.

  “The Grand Canyon is built on erosion. Go as far as you wish down the trail. Anywhere along the way is acceptable.”

  Many people, in varying stages of fitness, are attempting the trail. Young boy and girl scouts and foreigners are clattering away, the kids laughing and teasing and running as fast as they can down. Others are trudging back up the trail, looking winded and rationing whatever water they have left.

  An older couple is seeking shade. A guided mule train is walking by, and hikers have to make way for the mules. Tessa sees the old couple struggling to stay out of the way, but looking shaky as they slowly proceed uphill. She maneuvers herself down to them and helps them find some rocks to sit on in the shade.

  “Have one of my waters.”

  “Oh, we’re almost to the top, aren’t we?”

  Tessa has only been on the trail fifteen minutes. Twenty tops. But these people don’t look well. When she had taken the man’s arm to help them to the shade, it was cold and clammy.

  “It’s okay, I brought four waters.”

  “Is your hair partly pink?” the older woman, now seated, asks, squinting.

  Tessa nods and shifts where she is, so the woman doesn’t have to look into the sun when she addresses her.

  “On purpose?”

  Tessa smiles.

  The mules continue passing. Some of the riders are wearing really strong cologne and perfume.

  “My, they stink, don’t they?” the woman comments.

  “The mules have to poop too,” one of the last mule riders responds.

  The old woman and Tessa giggle.

  “I meant the perfume.”

  “I know, it gagged me too.”

  They act like teenagers together, and it provokes a grin from the woman’s husband.

  “Take my water,” Tessa insists. “It’s at least another forty-five minutes up.”

  “Thank you, angel.”

  Tessa holds both their hands a moment before moving on. She follows a safe distance behind the mule train. She turns back and her eyes see a shimmering as these two become younger people now, their heads bent together, laughing lightheartedly with each other, as they remain on the coolness of the rock for just a few more moments.

  AUNT SADIE’S JOURNALS are opening Tessa’s eyes to another dimension of the places she’s visiting. Sometimes, in a crowd, she’ll see the back of a woman’s head, her hair in ringlets, like a young Sadie.

  When she’s driving in the Ford, her hands gripping the steering wheel with the black leather padding wound around it, she can almost imagine looking over and seeing Sadie laugh at some remark from Percy.

  Sometimes in the evenings, when she’s walking Murphy around a sparsely filled campground, they’ll come upon two couples laughing and roasting marshmallows, and that shimmering thing occurs. Tessa will recall a photograph of her aunt and uncle with another couple from the road.

  In some ways, when Tessa is down by a body of water, it’s like Uncle Percy and Aunt Sadie are right behind her. Maybe that’s why she senses she’s being followed. Maybe it’s not creepy Uncle Chuck at all. Maybe it’s her ancestors.

  Chapter 16

  AT ZION, TESSA scores a campsite right next to the Virgin River. It is roaring. A series of recent heavy rains have engorged the river and she can hardly hear herself think as she relaxes in the outdoor chair.

  She and Murphy are in the shade of a grove of short, but old trees. Tessa hasn’t been sleeping very well, waking in the middle of the night, disoriented and not knowing where she is.

  Murphy’s tail thumps beside her when she sits up, as if he is saying, “I’m still here.”

  Tessa wonders what’s nagging at her, a sense of foreboding, or is she still looking over her shoulder for Uncle Chuck? She has some sense that she’s being followed, but when she looks and looks hard, she sees nothing.

  She attempts to paint the picture she took of the Grand Canyon. Focusing on her heart calms her. A long pull-behind trailer, much newer than hers, parks at the site across the way. Six shrieking children hop out. They scurry for the play area. They are followed by two adult women, and then, six more children. It seems like a lot of people, even for that large of a trailer. The man driving the truck and
a teenage boy in the passenger seat open their doors and begin unhooking their rig. The teenage boy with the cowboy hat takes one look at her and nods, and returns to his task.

  Mormons.

  “Howdy neighbor,” a voice calls out above the Virgin River. A middle aged couple approach. “Noticed the Michigan tags. We’re from Michigan and we’re hosting a neighborhood bonfire tonight. Three sites to the left of you. Tan Motorhome. Bring your chair. We’ll have s’more fixings.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tessa is so not going to a neighborhood s’more campfire. What does she have in common with these people?

  That night, the troubled, upset, sensations prevent her from sleeping. She tosses and turns. Soon she’s dragging her camp chair to the laughter three doors down. The circle is huge and all types of folks are sitting around it, including the Mormons and their teenage son and daughters. They enlarge the circle for her. The boy tries not to make eye contact, but his energy is focused on her. She catches him looking once or twice, but is involved in a conversation with Bill, the host.

  “You play euchre, of course?”

  She smiles. “I’m not competitive.”

  “Just for fun, just for fun. We have an informal card table for four. Us Midwesterners have to have a game or two?”

  She agrees.

  Before she knows it, all the other campers are grouped around trying to learn the game; the Benders are Island Pacific people, the Mormons, and the Hefrons from Rhode Island all watch as Tessa, Dianne, and Bill, and Jen, a twenty-something traveling from Columbus Ohio, all play.

  Jen is good, and Tessa just plays off her lead. To end the game, Bill decides to play a loner, where he drops his partner with just two trump. Instead of winning a possible four points, he loses good-naturedly.

  “What possessed you to try?” Tessa laughs.

  Bill wiggles his eyebrows. “It’s just for fun. Did you have fun that round?”

  Tessa nods. “You’re a risk taker.”

  “Oh, you bet he is.” Dianne smiles.

  “Have you hiked Angel’s Landing yet?” Jen asks Tessa.

  “No. I never heard of it.”