by Sands Hall
Maud peered in several directions, hoping for a lighted house, a neon sign, anything that hinted at civilization.
“You come to the Southwest, a bunch of wanna-bes. You want to touch our gods. Our gods.”
Maud cleared her throat to tell him this was not, in her case, true. But he would be sure to ask what, then, she was doing there. They jounced over a few more ruts. “Can you blame them?” Maud said carefully, not wanting to set another rant in motion. “Can you blame us, if we see something in your path that we find lacking in our own?”
Driver heaved in his seat to face her. “But our gods belong to us. They run in our blood.”
Maud was glad the darkness hid the shock she was sure showed on her face. She tried a sound that could be taken as a chuckle, in case he was inclined that way.
“I’m serious. It’s genetic. We can know our gods. You can’t. You need to know your own. Go find them.”
“Well,” Maud began.
Driver leaned towards her, one hand braced on the dashboard. “What you bring is a twisted body of a man on a cross, his eyes rolled back in pain. All your lessons about what’s bad, bad, bad on this earth. You drink your so-called savior’s blood, you eat his body—”
“I don’t,” Maud said, and thought of the orange cud of Cheesio.
“Don’t be literal. I’m talking, here. So of course you want the Navajo’s walk in beauty. Or you want what the Hopi know beyond the perceivable world. You’ve tried to force your suffering on us. You want us to forget our laughter, to see the world through dark eyes. And you have almost succeeded.”
“Some of us might agree with you,” Maud offered. “Maybe this is why people turn to your ways.”
He slapped the dashboard. “Then find your own way, find your own gods. You have so many—Greek, Roman, Norse. They run in your blood. What’s your last name?”
Startled, Maud said, “Maxwell.”
“That’s easy. Scottish. You have a clan, you have a plaid, all your own. You have all those Celtic deities.”
Dancing in the darkness outside the car Maud saw blue-faced naked warriors, jabbing spears in the air. The last play she’d done, two, or was it three, years ago, had been a modern story based on a Scottish legend. At the opening-night party they’d asked a guest to take a photograph of the cast and crew: all of them sitting on one couch, jammed in together, arms slung over shoulders, laughing, grinning, raising glasses to the camera. Family. Clan.
“Ask those ancestors to speak to you. Stop usurping ours.”
He sat beside her in a steaming silence. After a few moments she cleared her throat. “How far do we have to go?”
“You want it now, you want it quick,” he exploded, slapping the dashboard again. “Fast-food spirit. You haven’t put in years and centuries and blood and sinew and souls. Instead you develop new gods. The one of science. The ones of doctors, and drugs. The one of psychoanalysis. Which is based on a Catholic premise, you know. You’ve done wrong, go talk about it, say you’re sorry, you’re absolved. Then go do it again.”
This made Maud laugh.
“It’s true!” He waved at the night around them. “How is it possible for you to imagine that you are at the center of the universe when our dust is the same? We are the same particles, given life, come around again.” He reached to still the swinging feather. “We’re about there.”
It took Maud some time to translate an odd, oblong glow off to one side of the car into the shape of a trailer. She wondered about the source of the silvery light it emanated until she saw a bright coin of moon, low in the opposite sky.
Following Driver’s instructions, she pulled past the Airstream and parked beside a mobile home. A number of additions and extensions had turned it into a ramshackle building. A dim yellow light shone through one window. She turned off the engine. Driver extricated himself from the items around his knees. Maud, opening her own door, was greeted by a silence so profound it resonated. Some glowing, distant light must exist beyond the dark material that was night, she thought. The stars were pinpricks in that canopy stretched high above her.
Driver mounted the step in front of the trailer. Before he could knock the door opened. “Hey there, Driver.”
“Hey, Maggie.”
“Who’s your friend?”
Maud introduced herself to a woman who was a short and rotund shadow. “Nice of you to give him a lift,” Maggie said as she waved them in. The aromas of spice and meat assailed Maud. “For someone named Driver he sure do need a lot of rides.”
Driver made a strangled sound and headed for the stove, where he lifted and banged the lids of several pots.
“Beans,” Maggie told Driver’s offended back. “And take your hat off.” She wore a long skirt and a plaid flannel shirt. Her black and gray hair was pulled back tight into a silver barrette. In the light of the lantern on the table Maud saw that she was probably not Driver’s girlfriend, but perhaps his mother. “I just ate. They should still be hot.”
Driver pulled bowls off a shelf, yanked a troublesome drawer open for spoons. He held a bowl in Maud’s direction. “Want some?”
“Do you have a phone?”
Maggie shook her head. “Nearest one’s back down the road you just came up on, then another thirty-forty miles either direction.”
“Would I find a motel there as well?”
Both of them seemed to find this amusing. Driver pushed aside papers and cups and ashtrays and matchbooks and a carton of cigarettes, and slung a loaf of white, sliced bread in a cellophane bag onto the table. He ladled beans into a bowl. “You want some?” he said again.
“I’ve got to figure out where I’m staying, what I’m doing.”
“There’s a bed out back.” Maggie gestured with her chin. “You’re welcome to it. Get on the road again in the morning.”
“That’s so nice of you, but—” Maud wondered if Miles was worried yet. “I don’t know.” She rubbed at her forehead with both hands. “I don’t know.”
“Eat something.” Driver banged two steaming bowls onto the table, sat in front of one of them. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Maggie nodded. “Eat a little, sleep a little, things always look better. Hat off, Driver.”
Driver put his hat on a chair, pulled his hair through a rubber band he pulled from his jeans pocket. Maud didn’t know what was in those beans, how much lard or butter had been used to cook them. But she moved towards the table. Driver pushed the bread in her direction. The lantern light made the angles of his face sharp, emphasized shadows beneath his eyes, made the scars on his cheek disappear. He was handsome. He looked tragic. Maggie sat in a chair next to him. “And where’ve you been, Mr. Doctor of Philosophy? You abandon your little project out there?”
An aggrieved look took hold of Driver’s face. “Sick of it.”
Maggie shook a cigarette out of the pack lodged in the pocket of her shirt. “I thought you were supposed to be reporting to a high-up mucky-muck at that school of yours.”
Driver shrugged. “Changed his office hours. Hell if I was going to hang out an extra day, waiting. And Sara needed the car.”
In this context he seemed substantially less forbidding. Maud found she was disappointed. In the casting of the romance film she’d done as they drove, he was supposed to be difficult and harsh, and she, with sensitivity and love, would change all that.
The soup, a kind of chili, was delicious, with a hint of flavor Maud couldn’t place. “What is this?” she asked.
“Beans,” Driver said, resorting to the kind of duh face that had gotten Maud in trouble, as a child, for making.
Maggie poked his shoulder with a bony forefinger. “Don’t be rude. Anasazi beans.”
“And what’s that spice?”
“Cumin, probably. There’s others too. Coriander.”
“You heard of them? Anasazi?” Driver paused with the spoon halfway between bowl and mouth. His nose had a little bump in it. “Of course you have. I bet you’ve
been to Mesa Verde, seen the Spruce Tree House and Cliff Palace, heard the know-it-all round-eye rangers tell you all about how it was fear of invasion that drove them into those cliff dwellings?”
“Driver,” Maggie said, blowing smoke.
“Well,” Maud began, ready to talk about drought, which was the explanation she’d most often heard.
“Bought yourself a pair of Kokopelli earrings, then ran on down to Canyon de Chelly to gawk at Spider Rock for ten minutes, then slid on down the Navajo sandstone to look at the cliff dwelling there, White House. Then buzzed on over to Hovenweep, climbed a wooden ladder into a kiva and imagined you were touching the ancient ways?”
“I did go to all of those places.”
“And then you string a bead and a feather onto a shoelace”—he bracketed the last word with an aural leer—“and go back to ‘L.A.’ and let everybody know how hip you are. And of course you visited Chaco Canyon.”
“Yes.”
“That’s out of the way,” Maggie said. “And maybe we don’t need to hear your whatever-you-call-it, discutation, right here and now, Driver.”
“Dissertation.” Driver lowered his spoon again. “And maybe you heard from Erich von Daniken how the Anasazi were helped by creatures from outer space or how else could they have built straight roads and high houses, not to mention a solar marker that measures the solstice, the equinox, and the nineteen-year cycle of the moon? Native Americans couldn’t possibly have dreamed up the Sundagger by themselves—no, they had to have help. Ever wonder why so few of the rangers are Pueblo? Zuni? Acoma? Afraid to find out that all those ‘wise’ archeological theories are so much bunk, that’s why.”
“Oh, go sit in your excavation.” Maggie stood up.
Driver gulped soup, one eye on Maud, who, aware of his gaze, watched Maggie walk towards some shelves at the far side of the kitchen. She returned with a huge milky-white plastic jar, the kind in which one would buy mayonnaise or pickle relish in bulk. She reached into the jar and put a fistful of its contents into Maud’s hand. “Anasazi beans.”
Maud turned them over in the palm of her hand. They were mottled purple and white, quite beautiful. “All that color cooks out,” Maggie said. “Then they just look like regular beans, pintos, maybe.”
“Anasazi. Enemies of Our Ancestors. Is that right?”
“Enemies of Our Ancestors.” Driver repeated this, mocking, and sat back with his arms folded.
“One way of looking at it,” Maggie said. “And don’t mind Driver. He don’t know how else to get his point across yet. Others might say that ‘Anasazi’ means The Ancient Ones. Depends on your perspective.”
Driver disappeared after eating a third bowl of chili. Maud assumed he’d bedded down somewhere in the trailer. Exhausted, as much from sidestepping Maggie’s kind questions as from the long day of driving, Maud accepted her offer. She fetched her toothbrush and a T-shirt out of the car. Maggie escorted her to the Airstream, leaving her with a kerosene lantern and some matches, an extra blanket, and a roll of toilet paper. “Pee outside,” Maggie said. “If it’s otherwise, use the toilet in my place.”
The lack of a phone postponed for a number of hours the need Maud was beginning to feel that she should let someone know where she was. She was glad her parents were out of the country. She tossed from one side of the narrow mattress to the other, mashing the single pillow into a multitude of shapes, wondering if Miles was worried yet, if he missed her. The T-shirt of his she’d brought with her was clean; there was no lingering scent of him.
The moon emerged in a corner of the trailer’s high, rectangular window, bright as a flashlight beam. She sat up and scrubbed at her forehead, holding her face in her hands. Miles had accompanied her only once to the Southwest, on one of the visits to Lizzie he called her “pilgrimages.” Maud wanted to show him Santa Fe, Taos, Chaco Canyon, but they’d flown into Marengo and had no car. Jake Arboles, Lizzie’s boyfriend at the time, offered to loan them his Volvo. Miles had been reluctant. He seemed to be enjoying the sniping conversations he was having with Jake about the similarities of and differences between the music scenes in Nashville and Los Angeles. The tension between them made Maud gushy and overenthusiastic. Lizzie had just disappeared into her studio. When Jake made his offer, Maud seized it, grateful.
As they drove towards Taos, she brought up the idea of moving to the Southwest, laughing so Miles would not think she was serious. But he knew she was serious. “How am I supposed to get a record deal in Santa Fe?” he said, adjusting the rearview mirror. “Or in Albuquerque? Or Fairfield?” He waved at a sign that told them Fairfield was sixty-five miles away. “Or Marengo, for that matter?”
Maud allowed minutes of barren landscape to pass by before saying, “Jake’s a musician, a songwriter. He got a record deal.”
“I knew you would bring that up.” Miles slapped the gearshift. “That deal fell through.”
“He’s put a band together. He makes money doing that. He sells his songs.”
“He used to sell his songs. You heard him—that hasn’t happened in a while. You can’t live forever on residuals. And anyway, if he sells any songs, it’s because he did his time. He established himself. Like I’m trying to do. Jesus, Maudie. Whatever this picture is you have of life here, it doesn’t seem to include me. What in hell do you expect me to do for a living, bag groceries?”
“There’s always something.”
“Something is not a career.”
They’d eaten green chili at the Taos Inn, a delicious soup so hot it made their eyes run. They’d drunk margaritas and gone back to their hotel room and undressed.
“Is it safe?” he whispered as they stood beside the bed.
Safe. It was as if pregnancy were a disease. Or her womb was itself diseased. Or she was, riddled, oozing pus with her longing. He began to rock against her, his cock lifting and hardening. “No, I’m not safe, Miles,” she whispered, in a hot torrent of words, “but can’t we please make a baby?”
Miles stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed. She followed, needing connection, stumbling on a small throw rug by the bed. She let herself sink to the floor. “Can we just this once see if it happens?” She was almost crying. “Just go for it? If it doesn’t, we’ll take it as a sign from the gods or whatever and I’ll make sure I’m safe every time again. Please.” Her words were muffled, face pressed against the knobbly hotel bedspread. Her hands, clasped together, stretched out across the distance that separated them.
The bed creaked as Miles lay back. He lit a cigarette and placed a hand on one of her outstretched arms, as if he too felt a need for connection. She heard the sharp ssss of burning cigarette paper as he inhaled, and the long exhalation of smoke seconds after. Finally he said, “Really, Maud?” The question caught in his throat.
Rain began to rustle the leaves outside the window. The damp exhalation of the earth, the smell of the ground as it readied itself for growing things, made her womb ache. Sometimes she thought of it, her womb, as a beautifully furnished room, waiting once a month for its occupant to arrive. It was done all in earth colors, with a preponderance of dark reds, draped in soft silks and satins, velvet. Her period, each time it came, was accompanied by such severe cramps that she imagined miniature hands clawing at her innards as these furnishings bled out, a voice bleating, Don’t let me go, don’t let me go.
She stayed kneeling, her arms stretched across the bedspread, the position one of such supplication she felt both ashamed of and awed at herself. The rain hissed down and splattered against the flagstones outside their window. She imagined living in this land of surprising landscape and huge sky. She would be close to Lizzie and Hannah and Summer. She would have a house with a terra-cotta floor and Navajo rugs, where she would walk barefoot and pregnant, or nursing an infant. Light would fall through tall windows. She would grow sunflowers and basil and tomatoes and peppers. She would have a pair of big chairs next to a fireplace with ottomans and good reading lamps. She would hold candlelit dinners
for friends. Her vote would count in a runoff for mayor, and in favor of library funding. She would live in a place long enough to observe the coming and going of seasons, and she would mark, each year, the highest and lowest points of the rolling sun on her wall. She would finally know the continuity provided by living in awareness of things, such as the growth of perennials, and the hardy nature of geraniums.
She was startled, thrilled, when Miles lifted her up beside him. But at the last moment he pulled out. “I can’t, Maud,” he moaned as he jerked against her. “I just can’t.”
He sounded so terrified, so sad, so young, that she found herself stroking his shoulders, patting the small of his back, trying to give him comfort. She lay for hours, sleepless. Can’t what? she wanted to ask. But she had been unable to form the words.
Maud lifted her face. The moon had moved out of the frame of the trailer’s window. She stared at the rectangle of starry sky. For almost two years she and Miles had made love, if that’s what it could be called, with the Taos memory lurking in the back of her mind. The smell of rain, the tin ceiling of the hotel room, the question of what it was he couldn’t. She had never—and why hadn’t she?—alluded to it. From this distance her passivity seemed extraordinary.
She stood, panic gnawing at her chest, then sat again on the edge of the bed. She wrapped the blanket around her, wishing she could make some chamomile tea, something that would help her towards the sleep that she knew would now elude her.
Lizzie had always just done it, gotten pregnant when she felt like it. Why had Maud always felt she needed to ask permission, that it was something the two people involved should decide together? It had gotten her nowhere. It had gotten her nothing. She hated that she would feel the power, the ugliness, of the word barren.
She pulled on her jean skirt and sandals, wrapping the blanket around her. As she opened the trailer door she let out a tiny whoop of fright: Driver stood below her. Moonlight gleamed, a ghostly white, on his face and bare torso.