There was a canyon up in the Jemez so backland we could only reach it after half a morning on our horses, followed by another hour of tricky climbing. It was our discovery, this place. The horses tethered below receded until they became dark stains on the pale green floor of the head of the canyon cleft. We pulled ourselves up the face of the warm semivertical cliffs, finding footholds and niches as we went along. Sometimes the indentations in the stone seemed of such accommodation to our progress that we sensed they had been carved out by early settlers, Anasazi climbers, pueblo people who scaled these sheer slopes with the same ease we walk a level path to the market. Weather had worn away all evidence of tooling, though, so we couldn’t be certain. The cliffs projected in different directions as we reached a midpoint toward what appeared to be the first summit—we were nowhere near the peak of the mountains that rose away, horizon after horizon, toward the farthest clouds—and just when we thought we were too tired to hoist ourselves upward farther, the rock gave into a flat, and we lurched forward and lay recumbent, breathing hard in the thinner air. At the time, we never considered the peril in arriving here. If one of us had, no doubt it wouldn’t have been mentioned for fear of prompting the contempt of the other. We rode, we climbed, we lay face down for a minute to catch our breath, is all. And then we stood on top of the world, or nearly, and then strode forward on this mini-plateau, this stone table that, again, was smoothed to something of ballroom glaze, as if by thousands of bared feet. The first time we’d come here we didn’t know what lay at the interior edge of the long shelf of rock. The first time we just meandered, balmy pioneers. Thereafter, we knew what was ahead.
Some stands of aspen and fir. An Abert squirrel with rabbit-tall ears scurrying away, annoyed. Some mountain sheep droppings. And always the hawks, broad-winged and red-tailed, and every so often a bald eagle.
It was like looking down into the sky. We reached the end of the plateau and the rock broke off from its easy horizontal plane into a straight vertical drop of about thirty feet. At the bottom was an irregular oval basin, a sink of water. Its surface was serene, as if asleep, and it mirrored the passing clouds with such verisimilitude, detailing every shadow and wisp in its dense glass, that in the right light the pool looked as much like sky as the sky did.
Kip let out a shriek when he was pushed, and his voice followed him down, already resounding in the stone bowl, until he hit the even surface of the water with a thick splash.
He disappeared underwater.
When the top of his head appeared, a good distance away from where he had entered the pool, the surface shattered with foaming white and green bubbles. He howled with laughter.
—It’s freezing, he cried out.
Without a thought I leaped out into the dry emptiness and when I punched through the skin of sky’s reflection the walloping, hard water pulled my flesh upward on my face, and my feet braced for the bottom of the pool; I didn’t know how deep I had plunged but it seemed leagues before I kicked not rock but cold water, and paddled quickly back to the surface. Kip was already out and ascending a quite defined path that curved back toward the crest.
Games never stayed simple, it seemed, with us. This one developed in the following way. The object was to watch as the clouds passed, and wait until there was an opening of blue, a patch moving along the face of the pool, judge its direction and velocity and dive, headfirst or feetfirst, it didn’t matter, straight into the center of the target. You named your target right before you dove.
—Elephant, we’d shout, or —dragonfly!
—Hedgehog, we would shout, then dive.
—Blue pony!
Then down into the elephant’s eye, the dragonfly’s wing, the hedgehog’s belly, the blue pony’s mane.
Kip was smiling when he reminded me of this. They were good days, I knew it. What he told me then was that he used to do the same thing with the Hmong kids. They had found a place, up in the dangerous hills above Long Tieng. The water was not nearly as deep, and the jump from the cliff was possibly longer—it was as if you hung in the air endlessly before your body slapped into the cold water—but otherwise was much the same.
It was like a second chance for him, he thought. But a second chance at what?
“There are words to describe what had happened to me,” Kip is saying. “They’re meant to be derogatory. What happened was that I’d gone bamboo.” Like going crazy, perhaps, if viewed from the outside. But from inside the experience, a seductive alternative to going crazy. The lunar New Year came, and by the time it did Wagner and Kip were remarkably integrated into the community. They had made many friends, not only among the children, but their parents. Kha Yang was there, with his wife and two young boys. There were a few other spotters, joined by farmers and refugees—all distinguished by their hopeful will and strong capacity to survive. Kip and Wagner sat with their friends and drank lao lao—white lightning, rice whiskey—they watched the game of ball-catch between the girls and boys. Black iron pots of sticky rice stood on fires and the smells of roasted meat wafted over the three-mountained bowl of Alternate. When you eat with the Hmong you must always finish the food you accept from your host. Kip knew this. Hmong feasts were always served the same way, with woven bowls and wooden or silver platters laid out for the guests. Many were the times when you weren’t quite sure what was being offered you. Kip knew this, too, and tended to favor the vegetable dishes, which at least he felt he could recognize. A bean looked like a bean, but with meat—you could never tell. The banquet was well under way, the lao lao flowing, when Kip and Wagner, guests of honor, arrived. Each took the broad leaf of plantain, as was the custom, and went to the feast table. Roasted chicken flavored with lemongrass, larp—a cold minced pork or fish that tastes of lime and garlic and onions—tiny fried birds—hummingbirds, Kip was told—that were crunchy and eaten beak and all, a kind of ratatouille seasoned with hot spices that reminded Kip of Chimayóan red chili. There was a dish they served that looked for all the world like tomato aspic. Wagner urged Kip to give it a try, which he did.
—How’s that taste? asked Wagner.
—Not bad, said Kip.
—Take some more, it’s good for you.
Kip spooned some more onto his green plate, and continued on.
Their hosts were congenial and never were their earthenware cups of lao lao allowed to become empty. There were stories told by various heads of the families gathered, but though Kip’s command of the language had improved, they tended to talk too quickly for him to understand much of what was being said. Wagner, from time to time, would lean over and fill Kip in on the gist of the story. Sometimes Wagner would warn him, —Don’t smile, this is somebody’s cousin who witnessed a torture, or other times ask, —You following this? we’re supposed to laugh at the end of this one. Wagner helped him with vocabulary whenever he could, as well.
Dinner was far along when Wagner, a mischievous twinkle in his eye, turned to Kip, nodded at his plate, and said, —I’m proud of you, son.
Sensing that something was wrong, Kip refused to ask why. He had another spoonful of the tomato aspic at his lips, but laid it down and simply turned to look at his colleague. Wagner ignored him. Kip, by turn, ignored him and finished eating.
The festivities continued. A gift of an amulet for protection in the field was given to Kip by Kha Yang. A silver necklace with a dark stone image of the Buddha set in a triangular silver base.
—I don’t wear jewelry, said Kip.
—You wear this all times, you never will get hit, said Kha.
—What happens if they shoot straight and true, right at the plane? Kip asked.
—The bullets will not find it.
—What happens if they hold the gun right here in front of you and shoot? he asked, a little high from the lao lao. He held an imaginary gun and pointed it at Kha Yang’s heart.
—The bullet will go around, yes.
From where they looked out into the evening that now came over Alternate the karsts at the
northern periphery gathered violet light so that they seemed to glow, like two enormous tapered bulbs, and the milieu radiated a quality of home, a contentment that Kip hadn’t experienced since early childhood, perhaps not even then. What strange sweetness, he thought, expecting it to leave him, but it did not pass away. He held the amulet before him in the dusk, saw that the Buddha did not reveal himself, and then slipped the amulet necklace over his head. As the heavens purpled and captured black so that the first stars began to pulse, Kip imagined forward to when the war would be over, projected himself toward an evening much like this when the advisors began to be gone, the USAID workers were on their way, the field officers, the ambassador down in the concrete bunker war room in Vientiane, the hundreds of thousands of protestors who had come to Washington back in October to signal the beginning of the end of our commitments here were finally going home too, the North Vietnamese Army who would soon enough begin their annual fall offensive and the negotiators in Paris now began to be gone, the irregular forces out in temporary bunkers under the emerging stars, the capitalists and Communists, hawks, doves, all of them would be gone from where they were now. As he willed them home it was as if all of them seemed just to float away into the ionized ether of dusk light. Kha Yang asked Kip, —You want ball play?
—With the children? Kip asked.
—No. We football, play.
Wagner said something in Lao, and asked Kip if he knew how to play soccer. —Not really, said Kip.
—Neither do I, but I guess we’re about to find out.
By the light of two bonfires on a field down near the airstrip, a group of men ran back and forth. The green body bags that were laid out in a nearby morgue, delivered earlier in the afternoon from out in the mountains in order that their contents be identified if possible before burial, were for the briefest moment forgotten. Wives, daughters, widows sat along the edges of the field and watched all the other stars come out, and fed the bonfires, and dared to talk contentedly among themselves while the men played on.
The next day Kip finally asked Wagner, —Okay, so what was in that tomato aspic?
—What tomato aspic? Wagner retorted.
—Come on, man, said Kip.
—I don’t know what you’re talking about, Calder.
—The aspic, you said it was good for me?
—Oh, that. I never told you that was tomato aspic, did I?
—Wagner, said Kip.
—Congealed water buffalo blood, said Wagner, after a pause. —Hey, don’t worry. I like it, too.
Once I knew in my heart Kip was never coming back, my burdened view of Jessica was free to change. He was gone now, and he was going to be gone if not forever at least long enough that Jessica’s heart—were she to save it from being broken—would have to learn to elude him.
The danger for me in all this was less that Kip might return to make some new bid for her and the child, than that Jessica would keep on loving him in the way people have of coveting absent lovers. But I could see at once that this was not how Jess was going to behave in the wake of Kip’s desertion—desertion, yes, to call a spade a spade since it was as much an abandonment as a being pushed out—no, in fact, it appeared she was going to act in quite the opposite way.
—Everyone has the freedom to make whatever choices they want. I couldn’t expect him to try to be somebody he’s not.
—That’s a pretty generous outlook, I said.
She said, —So, I’m generous.
—I mean it, though. You aren’t angry with him?
—I was, but I don’t see what the point would be to stay angry anymore.
—It’s not a matter of whether there’s a point or purpose or something, I just meant—well, I’m angry at Kip.
—Why?
—Because—
—Because he isn’t doing what you want him to do?
—It’s not that.
—If it’s not that, it’s something close to that.
—Maybe so, I said.
—Kip has the right to run away. You yourself said it that night when we told each other our worst traits. Being mad at Kip, when you take a couple of steps back and look at it objectively, or fairly, being mad at him for running would be like being mad at a bird for flying or a rabbit for hopping.
—You still love him, don’t you.
—I don’t see why I shouldn’t. But it doesn’t mean that I have to throw myself and Ariel away just because he’s doing what he’s got to do.
—I like you, Jess.
—I don’t know why.
—You’re a good person. That’s why.
—No, I’m not, she said. —I’m just trying to be a sane person.
Our domesticity reestablished itself with an easiness that should probably have alarmed us. Or at least alarmed me. I liked Jessica, I loved Jessica. Bird meant to fly, rabbit meant to hop, Kip meant to run, I was, I thought, meant to love her. What was new was that I didn’t much care whether she wanted me to love her, didn’t want me to love her, whether she was indifferent to my loving her, or any other configuration. I just lost whatever self-consciousness had plagued me before; a lesson taught me by Jessica herself—and if she didn’t care to love me in return, who was I to reproach her? who to presume more?
And my love for Ariel grew so spontaneously and fully that there were moments when, I believe, if Kip were here again and asked me if I were her father, I would have to ponder hard for an accurate answer. I forgot with such thorough, unhurried forgetfulness, that Ariel did become my true daughter and I her true father. Day and week and month, Ariel was my girl. I played with her, I read to her, sometimes I even overcame Jessica’s jokes about my voice and sang to her: —Froggy went a-courtin’, he did ride, to which Jess rejoined, —When Brice starts a-croakin’, even froggies hide. And while the process may have been slow, and so many of its individual details lost on me, Jessica learned to love me, too. Our incipient family, always hitherto on the brink, always almost, subtly branched into fulfillment. I do, in fact, remember.
It came in an embrace. Both of us standing, me and Jess. We were on the street.
A nothing day. Nothing romantic, neither serene sunshine, nor evocative rain, nor a pretty snowfall around us. Overcast, drab. Ariel was with a baby-sitter and Jess and I had decided to take a long walk somewhere, no particular place in mind. She was wearing a dark blue velvet djellabah-like dress with a wide Navajo belt strung with silver suns around her narrow waist. She smelled of lilacs.
I forget why it was we embraced, but we did. We held each other with impassioned strength and my hand moved up her back until it reached her neck whose flesh was so warm. My cheek was against hers, my fingers tangled in her fine hair, I reveled in that flowery smell of her with one deep breath after another, and without another thought we were kissing.
We slept together that night and most every night ever since.
Wagner had a little book whose Sanskrit title was, more or less, Ka-ka Chareetra. It was a tract on the behavior of ravens and crows, and a lexicon of their language, the language of ravens. In the foreword, the translator mentions that there are “expressions in the language and behaviour of ravens and crows which accurately convey messages and portents. These can be interpreted, if observed and understood correctly.” It was a guidebook to the cawing of ravens, a map to the meanings conveyed by these black, intelligent, and, according to the book, helpful creatures. Wagner loaned the tract to Kip. One night, without preamble, he put it in Kip’s hands with the words, —Here, check this out.
Kip read the book by flashlight that night. Wagner was one weird puppy, he thought; maybe a genius, maybe just plain nuts. But the book was fascinating—itself genius, itself nuts—translated by one Mahapandita Dhanasheela at Yalung Thangpoche Monastery in the province of U in the late eighth century. It was very small, unlike the birds it hoped to interpret.
It said, There are Brahmin ravens, Kshatriya ravens, and there are Vaishya and Sudra ravens. Those that like yoghurt tend to be Brah
min, the red-eyed ones are Kshatriya, the stocky ones Vaishya, and the lean-bodied who sup on leavings, like ordure and carnage, refuse and trash, are the Sudra. Mentioned here are the utterances in the language of the ravens that hold equally true for all householders. Then there was a colon. And then Kip turned the page and entered into the language of the ravens.
When a raven caws in the early morning, just at first light, and his sound comes from the south, it means friends are on their way. When the cry comes from the southeast—just the opposite. It means your enemy is coming for you. If the bird makes its noise at midday and from the northwest, a king will be dethroned. From the northeast, a quarrel will take place. In the afternoon, should the raven caw from the west, you will know that a woman is coming to you. And if from the northeast, something will be burnt by fire. If the raven makes its cackle directly over your head, you will find the means to please the king. In the late afternoon, it is often best not to hear the raven. If he is overhead, hunger and famine are in your future. If his cry comes from the west, a storm is brewing, and if from the east, there is something greatly to be feared. Similarly, at sunset, ravens might best be avoided, for if you hear one cawing in the east, it indicates that enemies are on their way, and approach you from the road. Southeast—you will suffer a wretched loss. South—death from disease. And almost as frightening, if the raven flies overhead in the evening and calls out to you, you will attain whatever you have in mind.
Kip put the book down more than once and extinguished the feeble light, to think. His mind would race and ramble, and then he would turn on the light again and read more.
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