“You sure it was right here?”
“Sure as sugar, sir.”
The man shook his head, but then he kind of shooed me toward the pile with his hands.
“All right. We gotta hurry, though.”
And I spun back to the dirt and started digging again, and that fella with the green-flecked eyes stepped right up at my side, and he started digging with his hands, too.
The backhoe operator started a fresh round of shouting, but the guy beside me barked at him, “Aw, chill out, Ed. It’ll just take a minute,” and then Ed said, “Dang it, Travis, I got a schedule to keep,” and my new friend Travis answered, “Well, if you’re in such a rush, why don’t you get us a couple shovels?” and Ed snorted and spit, but a second later he was gone and a minute after that he was in the ditch with us, handing us shovels, and he started digging on my other side, and between shovelfuls, he asked me, “What are we looking for?” and I paused just long enough to tell him and his voice was rude and gruff, but I swear if I hadn’t been so busy digging, I woulda hugged that man.
We tore into that hill of dirt, us three. There was nothing but the sounds of our breathing and the clinking and scritching of our shovels digging dirt and tossing rocks.
Sweat was dripping into my eyes and I was wiping at it with my arm, so I don’t know when exactly he got there, but I looked up and saw Salvador standing up at the surface, working at the side of the pile with a shovel of his own, his white undershirt smeared with dirt. He saw me seeing him and gave me a little nod, but he kept working, attacking the dirt.
An ornery bleat rang out and Gladys walked up to the ditch, flapped her ears, and peered down at me. I’d bolted out of Yager at a dead run and left the door standing open behind me, but I wasn’t worried. Gladys could take care of herself.
Then, as if he could read my mind, Salvador said between breaths, “Don’t worry. Ivan’s still on the bus. And I closed the door.”
I heard, somewhere, a voice still shouting and I glanced up just long enough to see it was the cop, hands on his hips and a frown on his face, taking turns snarling at Salvador and throwing some words at us down in the ditch.
Finally Ed, big old grumpy Ed, stopped for a breath and leaned on his shovel sweating and said up at the cop, “Come on, man. Give it a break. This girl is looking for something.”
“What is she looking for?”
“Well, it ain’t a gun, all right? So just give us a minute.”
Ed was growing on me.
The cop seethed, but he zipped his lip and just stood there, rocking on his heels and looking nasty.
We hacked away at that mountain of dirt, me and Ed and Travis and Salvador, tossing the dirt over our shoulders and sending little avalanches of it crumbling down to our feet. The pile got smaller and smaller, and we got sweatier and dirtier. And all our shovels hit was dirt, or rocks, or roots.
Eventually, Ed gave up. He grunted and wiped his face and stepped back, panting from the work, and then sat on the opposite edge of the ditch watching us.
Beside me, I could tell that Travis was losing hope, too. His scoops got fewer and farther between, and sometimes he just kinda stood there, poking at the mound with his shovel.
Salvador never slowed down, though. Every time I glanced up, he was digging and scooping and throwing. His shirt was filthy now and stuck to his body with sweat, but he never stopped. I knew he wasn’t going to stop until I did.
That’s a friend, right there. That’s the kind of friend you want with you.
My shovel dove and plunked, then scooped and lifted and tossed and then dove and plunked again.
And then, just like in some dumb movie, it happened.
My shovel dove and plunked, but it didn’t plunk deep. It plunked shallow and stopped cold. I’d already hit plenty of rocks, but this plunk felt different. A little less solid. A little more hopeful. And it made a sound, too, a sound like a rock hitting a stop sign. It was quiet, muffled by dirt, but it was there. I knew I hadn’t imagined it, because even Travis stopped his poking and his head snapped over to look at where my shovel had plunked.
I scraped the shovel nose back, but the dirt above came cascading down so quick that I couldn’t see anything and I stabbed with the shovel one, two, three more times and each time I carved a little more dirt away and each time it made that little sound and each time that sound was a little louder.
And then, finally, the dirt that kept falling down didn’t fall straight down; it split and poured down around the corner of something. The corner of something that was sticking out, just a bit, from that pile of dirt. The corner of something that was metal, and square.
I stopped. I mean, I just froze. I was looking at it. It was looking at me.
“That it?” Travis asked, and I couldn’t answer. I dropped the shovel. I reached out with an unsteady hand. My fingers stopped, an inch away. My heart pounded in my ears and my lungs held on to their breath like it was their last. And then I touched it. I just touched it, lightly.
“Mom,” I whispered, my finger on that box we’d buried there together.
Ella will remember.
CHAPTER
FORTY-THREE
I grabbed the jutting corner of the box and tugged. It didn’t give.
There was a thudding crunch as Salvador jumped down beside me. He didn’t say anything. He just scooped away the dirt around the box with his fingers while I wiggled and pulled at the box. Sometimes I stopped pulling and worked with him, scraping the dirt away. But he never took hold of the box himself, never yanked on it or tried to jerk it free, even though there was a distant chance he was stronger than me. He never tried to pull it out himself. I think he knew that moment was for me.
We got more and more of the corner showing and then another corner and we sped up, Salvador digging with both hands like a dog and me leaning back, putting my legs into it, straining to bust that box loose.
I was getting shaky, like when you’re so super starving you can hardly stand it and then you see the plate coming, hot and salty.
And then it broke free.
It tilted and slid out into my hands and I was holding it. I was holding that box and it was just like I remembered—dirty and scratched up and dented—but other than that it was just like I remembered and it was in my hands. It was warm—I don’t even know why—but it was warm. I held that box in my hands and I stopped breathing and I took every breath in the world. My mom. My sisters. My mom. My sisters. I held that box and I held them.
I held that box and every the end and every once upon a time that ever was rang out at the same time, all tangled up together.
With a slow, careful hand I wiped the dust off the top of the box. It was dinged up and dirt encrusted and rusty. It was perfect.
I realized I was kneeling. I had no memory of dropping to my knees, but there I was, on my knees in the dirt.
I rose to my feet. I tried to breathe. Tried to clear my eyes. I looked over at Salvador, who was looking back at me, his eyes deep and solemn pools. I nodded to him, once. He nodded back, once. He was still breathing hard from the chase, the digging, the finding. So was I, I think.
I looked up, out of the ditch, past the waiting machines and watching workers.
There was one tree left in the park. One, way over at the edge, that hadn’t been ripped out. Maybe it wasn’t in the way and would be spared. Or maybe they just hadn’t gotten to it yet. But it was still there for the moment, still dropping shade like they all had on all those days all that time ago, and on one day in particular.
I stumbled out of the ditch, holding that box with two hands and one heart. I rose up out of that earth that was raw and torn up like a freshly dug grave. Salvador’s footsteps scratched along behind me.
There were a few guys standing with crossed arms. I guessed they’d been watching the whole thing. They stepped to the side and let me pass. I made my way toward the tree that stood alone, all of its family ripped away.
Salvador’s footsteps stopp
ed at the line of workers and he let me go on by myself.
I heard one of the guys grumble, “What is it?” and I heard Salvador answer low, “It’s a memory box. She buried it there with her mom,” and then I heard someone say, “Well, where’s her mom?” and Salvador almost whispered his answer, but I still heard it, “She’s dead,” and then there was a big silence, a heavy silence, an understanding kind of silence. And not one of those folks said a word. And not one of those folks complained about the interruption. And not one of those folks told me to hurry the heck up so they could get back to work.
“Hey!” The voice cut through the moment. It was the cop, of course. “Hey! Where you going?” His voice got louder as he spoke, so I knew he was jogging up behind me.
“Leave her alone, man,” I heard one of the guys grumble.
“Leave her alone? Do you have any idea what she—”
“Oh, give it a rest, dude. You can wait one minute. I mean, she ain’t going nowhere, right?”
The cop, though, would not give it a rest. And he wasn’t gonna give me one minute, either.
“Stop!” he said, and I could hear his angry footsteps stomping up behind me. “Can you hear me? Stop!”
I could, and I didn’t.
I was going to the shade of that tree, that last tree standing. And I was gonna sit down in whatever shade she offered. And I was gonna open up that box. And I was gonna spend a little time with my mom and my sisters. Right here in our park.
But the cop wasn’t giving up easy.
He puffed up beside me.
“Hey,” he said gruffly. “You need to stop.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead and my feet moving. I didn’t trust my throat to speak. The memories were all around me, the ghosts waiting under the tree; I didn’t want to lose them. Ever again.
“Hey!” he said, and he grabbed my arm. “You need to stop. Now.”
His fingers locked onto my arm. Hard. And he stopped me hard and spun me around hard. He was all hardness, that cop.
I didn’t have it in me to deal with all his hardness, because there was nothing hard left in me. I was soft and broken and falling apart, right down to my middle. But I was ready to fight that cop to the end to do what I needed to do, what I was aching to do, what I was almost dying to do. I was ready to fight his hardness, because gosh darn it, the world is hard enough as it is without hard people making it even harder. I was ready to fight.
Turns out, I wasn’t the only one.
I’d only gotten as far as opening my mouth when there was a coming-at-us-fast drumming in the ground. A little thunder rolling our way, for just a second, before it got to us. Well, before she got there.
She hit him from the side and she brought a cloud of dust with her. Gladys came flying from our periphery, her head lowered and her horns ready, and she gave that cop a headbutting he ain’t never gonna forget. Yeah, she rammed him. Hard.
That hard cop met the hard end of a hard goat. And the goat won.
There was a grunt and a coughing whoosh of breath when she hit him. He went straight down to the ground and skidded a bit on his butt, his feet kicking up in the air. When he came to rest in a little dirty cloud, Gladys stood over him, head lowered, pawing the ground with a hoof and clearly ready for round two.
The cop looked up at her, and I’d say the vast majority of the hardness had left him. His eyes were wide as quarters, his face pale, his mouth hanging open.
“I’m sorry, officer,” I said quiet. “She’s a good goat. And a goat is a loyal animal.”
The cop just stared at me. I think he was still fairly rattled, and I can’t say that I blame him.
“I’m gonna go over to that tree over there. And I’m gonna go through this box. Just for a few minutes. And then I’ll go with you. You don’t need your gun. You don’t need your handcuffs.” I looked at Gladys, who still stood trembling with ready indignation. “You probably do need to avoid eye contact and sudden movements, though.”
Gladys snorted.
The cop twitched and flinched.
“Just a few minutes,” I repeated, right into his eyes. “Okay?”
The cop swallowed, eyes still wide.
He nodded.
“Thank you,” I said. The box felt heavy in my hands, and it felt weightless.
I turned and walked over to the tree and knelt down in the grass. I set the box on the ground in front of me.
There was a little metal clasp that clicked shut and held the box closed.
Slowly, I lifted it up. It was rusty and it was stubborn, but after a second it popped up and open.
I took a breath. One deep breath of air down into the very bottoms of my lungs.
I felt them. I felt them all around me. Looking over my shoulders. Putting their arms around me. They were there.
I opened the box.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR
Here’s a memory.
I don’t know when it was, exactly. Not that long before we buried the box. Not that long before … everything.
It was spring, but the warm kind. The kind of spring that’s already trying sometimes to be summer.
We went for a hike. All five of us. Just up in the hills around Poplin Springs. It was something we did.
We walked up the dirt trail, up out from the valley floor. Up to the tops of the hills, where we could see the distant mountains and the bends of the river and the town laid out below us all miniature. It was steep and it was long, but we could see forever up there, it felt like. And a chance to see forever is worth the work.
The slopes were green with spring’s rain and sun, the grass long and bright, swaying like seaweed in the breeze. The fields were exploding with wildflowers: purple lupine and yellow balsamroot and little white ones I’d never known the name of. So much color, so much living, so much life up there that sometimes your eyes didn’t believe it, and sometimes you even had to whisper to your own heart, No, it’s real. It was heaven.
Rodeo was there. Back before he was Rodeo. Back when he was just Dad, and I was just his daughter. One of his daughters.
And Rose, her legs too little for the long climb, riding up on Rodeo’s shoulders.
And Ava, long-legged and long-haired, talking with her hands.
And me, back when I was Ella. Just Ella. The daughter, the little sister, the big sister. The one in the middle. Never alone, back then.
And Mom. Oh, Mom. Mom with the voice like warm honey. Mom with the touches that made everything better.
I held my mom’s hand as we walked. Hers bigger than mine, soft, warm, safe.
Near the top I dropped her hand and ran ahead, ran ahead of my family to beat them to the top.
The sun was just getting to setting, dropping down below the mountains on the horizon. The light was coming in long sideways beams, through the clouds, slanting sharp and golden through the grasses, through the flower blooms stretching up toward the sky.
I stopped there, in the middle of all the glory. I turned back to my family walking up toward me.
Mom came first, walking by herself. Dad and Ava and Rose were farther back, taking their time, talking and meandering. But Mom came first, following my footsteps, wading off the trail and into the grass and flowers to come my way.
She didn’t come straight to me, though. Even though I wanted her to. She walked off to the side, just a little. Finding her own path. She stopped, off by herself, facing into the sunset. Her eyes were alight with the sun’s fire. Her hair blew in wisps around her face. The sunlight hit her face and it was pure gold.
She looked off into the distance and I saw her take a breath, a deep breath, and let it out slow.
Then she turned her head and looked at me, looking at her. There was nothing but green and bloom and light between us. And she smiled at me. A sharing smile. A smile that was just for me. A smile that said all the most beautiful things that moms say to daughters. And I smiled back. A smile that said all the most important things that daughters say to m
oms.
You know what? I don’t think I’m ever gonna see anything in my life more beautiful than my own mama smiling in the sun. I got a whole life ahead of me, but I just don’t believe that I’ll ever see anything more beautiful than that, and than her.
I loved her so much in that moment I could barely breathe. It almost choked me, how much I loved her. All I was in that moment was loving her. I loved her. I loved her. I loved her.
That’s it. That’s the whole memory.
That memory doesn’t have any words.
It doesn’t need them.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
The lid creaked open. I let it fall back until it hit the grass, so the box lay there wide open.
I looked inside the box.
My skin went all tingly and goose bumpy.
Oh, man.
It was there. It was all there. Just like I remembered it.
Just like we’d left it.
There was a pile of papers all jumbled together, and I could see the little-kid handwriting here and there, could see the crayon pictures. There were a few smooth rocks that we must’ve thought were special back then. And, boy, were they ever. I picked one up and held its cool roundness in my hand and closed my eyes and stopped breathing, just knowing that Rose had held it in her hand, had squeezed that very rock between her perfect little fingers.
I put the rock back in the box, laying it down gentle as a bird’s nest, and picked up the top piece of paper. It was a drawing, scrawled in crayon with a four-year-old’s care, sloppy and beautiful. It was a picture, I could tell, of me and Rose. Her hair was a spaghetti mess of curly lines, mine was done in short scribbles. We had big wobbly smiles and round ghost eyes. We were holding hands.
Under the picture were a few lines of words, and I remembered what Mom had told us: “Write down for each person what you love about them.”
The words were Rose’s, but the writing was Mom’s. Rose was too small to write, so she had told Mom her answers and Mom had written them down in big, clear letters so that Rose could see and start to learn. I ran my fingers over one line, felt the waxy crayon with my fingertips, and traced the words: “I love my sister Ella because she loves me, no matter what.” I nodded, my breath hot in my throat, my eyes burning and blinking. “Yes,” I tried to whisper. “Yes. It’s true, Rose. No matter what.”
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise Page 24