Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

  She took on the more repellent chores—mucking out the chicken coop, turning the compost, burning the body of a coyote that had died near the oasis. She wanted to smother herself in the worst the desert could throw at her, drive away the baby powder smell of her teammates’ deodorant, the slimy mildew odor of a lifetime of locker rooms, and the heady pop of a can of fresh balls.

  If she became unrecognizable to herself, she would be invisible to those who might still be looking. And if she labored hard enough, harder than she thought possible, she could reach that blackout stage of pure fatigue where mind and memory cease, leaving behind the body to do its work.

  During farm chores, the interns always started off strong, a burst of industry—singing, whistling, praising the beauty and the power of whatever task they’d been assigned. Then they’d peter out, wandering away to check something inconsequential—a jar of fermenting kombucha, the way the sun was throwing a shadow net of leaves on a flat rock, a snakeskin shed on someone’s threshold.

  Initially Britt was frustrated by their shirking. But soon she looked forward to the moment they’d wander off, leaving her in the gore and grime. Her muscles were coming back. She could see the curve return to her biceps and feel the bulk in her shoulders. Her calluses would appear soon too. She could see how the weeping blisters from the shovel and sledgehammer on her palms and fingers would heal, then harden. At night, after the sharing session, she’d probe her muscles, prod the ripped red circles on her palms, enjoying the deep ache and prickle of pain.

  When the last intern wandered off, Britt was left with Grace. Since Grace’s outburst by the pond she had barely spoken to Britt or the other interns, still holding them responsible for her missing son. She worked alongside them in silence, only giving instructions when necessary, saying nothing when they quit for some more abstract pursuit.

  When it was just the two of them shoveling out the coop, their arms grazing, their movements in efficient sync, Britt felt the weight of Grace’s silence.

  The sun was a brutal assault, cooking the coop’s already fetid smell, pasting a slick of loose feathers to Britt’s arms as she worked. She and Grace had just finished loading a wheelbarrow. Britt blew on her blistered hands to cool them before gripping the cart’s wooden handles. Grace was drinking from a mason jar of water. She passed it to Britt.

  They sipped in silence, watching a desert hare seek shade behind the garage. Britt glanced at Grace hoping she’d say something. Sweat was pouring down their foreheads. Their hair was dirty and stiff with detritus from the coop. They’d been working for five hours, alone for three.

  Britt allowed herself a small sip from the jar. She didn’t want to let her exhaustion show.

  Grace took the water away. “Take the muck to the far side of the garden. We’ll let it enrich the soil.”

  Britt lifted the wheelbarrow. Her palms stung. “Out of refuse comes beauty,” she said. It was something Cassidy had said, or close. Something she imagined was close to the wavelength of Howling Tree Ranch.

  She began to roll the wheelbarrow out of the coop.

  “What did you say?”

  Britt looked over her shoulder at Grace who was staring at her, her brow furrowed, her eyes crinkled, her lips pulled back.

  “I said, out of this refuse something beautiful will grow.”

  “Look around,” Grace said. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I don’t know—”

  Grace glanced across the yard at Gideon and another intern making sun tea out of a grab bag of herbs. “They sound so confident when they talk about things they don’t know,” she said. “I thought you were trying to be different.”

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON THERE WERE NO MORE CHORES. BRITT JOINED A few of the interns in the pond where they were floating naked.

  Gideon sat on a flat rock rolling a joint. He lit it and swam out, putting it between Britt’s lips. “You work too hard,” he said. “You’ll overlook the sky if you keep your eyes on the ground.”

  Britt took a deep drag. Seeds slid through the paper and into her teeth. “Work hard with your body. Work hard on your soul,” she said. She exhaled, the stream of smoke blanketing her laughter.

  “I dig it,” Gideon said, wrapping his arms around her. “I dig it. And there I was thinking you were too grounded in the straight world for us.”

  Britt let him hold on for a moment, then wiggled free, diving down, driving her fingers into the muddy bottom of the pond. She came up and floated. The joint circled. The palms overhead told each other secrets.

  Britt stayed on her back, her head just low enough to keep her from hearing the chatter. She watched the wind shake a dry palm frond loose, watched it twirl, then plummet into the water.

  THE INTERNS DRIFTED ACROSS THE POND, THEIR VOICES LOST, EXCHANGED for the ebb and flow of the pond’s slight current against Britt’s ears. Then that too was silenced, replaced by a familiar orchestra. At first Britt thought it was the hum of farm machinery echoing underwater or the reverb of a plane flying low overhead. But then she knew it—the classical piece that had been playing while the Toyota lay trapped by two trees just off the road in Laurel Canyon. Bach, that’s what it had been. And now she heard it again, echoing in the silty water at Howling Tree Ranch, haunting her.

  She had gone into shock—she realized that a couple of days after she’d fled the accident. Trapped in the upside-down SUV, her mind had locked down, unable to fathom how much worse things could have been, how those trees might not have caught them. The car could have kept on rolling and fallen deeper into the ravine. She couldn’t reach out to Andy, who was slumped over the wheel, his face slack, his eyes rolled back. She had tried to touch him, but pulled back at the last minute. She didn’t want to know.

  Instead, she’d fumbled for the button on the radio, anything to get that damn Bach turned off. And somehow, she’d wriggled out of her seat belt. Her door had swung open, freeing her from the car. She’d slipped, the trees and scrub tearing her dress. She scrambled up the incline toward the road. She hadn’t looked back.

  She should never have allowed herself to remember the accident. Because the memory made the water in the pond feel too hot and too heavy, like it was trying to drag her down, suffocate her. She splashed to shore with panicked, haphazard strokes. She needed to keep moving, outrun the memory, leave it behind. She needed to force herself into the numbed state that came from either drinking or running, when her body detached from her mind.

  She didn’t bother to dry off, just shoved her sockless feet into her sneakers. And then she ran. She sprinted, away from the oasis, past the cabins, out into the desert. She pushed herself, hoping for that moment when her exhaustion would vanquish her thoughts and her mind wouldn’t go blank but black.

  Four hundred meters, then eight hundred—a half mile give or take. Her mind was on the pain in her shins, the tightness in her quads. Soon her focus was turned inward, to the beat of her heart, the struggle of her breath. She ran faster so the blood rushing in her ears swamped her thoughts, drowned out the sound of the crash and the memory of that damn Bach.

  But something was penetrating the internal cacophony of her run, an unfamiliar desert noise, a low animal moan, not feral; well, not entirely feral Britt hoped. She stopped. She put her hands on her knees, panting, sweating. Then she lifted her head and looked at the flat rock in front of her.

  Cassidy was on her knees, bare chested, her wild hair bouncing around her shoulders, her beads clacking and smacking into her sternum. Her long skirt was bunched up around her hips, her soft belly undulating over the waistband. Underneath her, his wraparound shades pushed up into his gray-black hair, was Patrick. He reached up, cupping both of Cassidy’s breasts, then let his hands fall as if it wasn’t worth the effort.

  Britt took a step back, her foot cracking through a low arrowwood bush. Cassidy looked up. Her blissed-out eyes regained focus and she gave Britt a satisfied smile. Then without breaking eye contact, she lowered her mouth to Patrick’s ear. Britt c
ould almost feel the hot, wet whisper.

  Then Cassidy sat up and shut her eyes, dismissing Britt. She flung her head back, jiggling her breasts from side to side, whipping her wild hair, ramping up her performance, playing to the back of the house, working Patrick like a sorority girl riding a mechanical bull.

  Britt took a deep breath, ignoring the tightness in her lungs and the burn in her calves, and kept running, not back to the farm but farther toward the national park, like nothing had interrupted the rhythm of her run.

  THAT NIGHT IT WAS CASSIDY’S TURN TO SHARE. AND AS USUAL THE INTERNS were brutal on her. She sat at Patrick’s feet, looking at him as the shouted accusations and defamations reached a fever pitch, absorbing the interns’ cruelty without looking at them.

  Anushna piled on. Then two of the other guys. Then Gideon again.

  “Britt?” Patrick said. “You have nothing to add? You think Cassidy’s response to the question is perfectly honest? That she has achieved her true self?”

  “I think Cassidy prefers performing for others rather than focusing on herself,” Britt said. “I think Cassidy only pretends to want to be part of the group but instead would rather be above it.” It felt good, she had to admit, this reasonless attack, savaging Cassidy for her exhibition out on the rock.

  “Good,” Patrick said.

  “Cassidy needs to be loved by everybody,” Anushna said, “but she only values the love of certain people.”

  “Cassidy mistakes sex for love,” Gideon said. “Cassidy confuses sexuality with spirituality.”

  “That’s a lie,” Cassidy said. “You’re a liar.”

  When the session was over, lingering aggression hung in the air. The interns drank heavily, groped and pawed, and quickly got sloppy. Britt joined them for a bit, but her work in the coop and her run made her an easy drunk so she dragged herself back to her cabin before she made a mistake.

  She had no idea how long she’d been asleep when the door to her cabin opened. At first she thought Gideon had come to press his luck because she knew all the hippie-dippie bullshit would fade away the moment she told him no.

  She reached for the light.

  “Don’t.”

  It was Patrick’s voice. Britt pulled her covers up to her chin.

  “Shh.” He sat at the edge of her bed. Her body tensed as he slid under the covers.

  Britt kept her hands pressed to her sides, her toes curled, her calves tense, her stomach taut. She could feel every detail of his body where it touched hers—his wiry arm hair, the bump of his elbow, the knob of his shoulder, his knuckles and fingertips against her hip, his ankle bone against hers.

  She waited for the migration to begin, the casual crawl of his hands over the waist, the first tickle of toes, the incremental invasion until he was on her, in her. But Patrick didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just lay there in the dark until their breath fell into sync. Until Britt started to lose herself in the in-out rhythm of their chests rising together. Until she slept. And when she did, she didn’t hear the desert and she didn’t dream of the accident.

  12

  TONY, LOS ANGELES, 2010

  When Tony wakes up, the sky is the color of eggplant—an imperfect black that is the result of light pollution or immanent dawn. The clock on the table tells him it’s not even six. He feels the familiar punch in the gut followed by the tightening in his chest as the list of things to do, things to pay, and all his other ambient stresses reach him at once. He feels for his phone under his pillow, ready to check his e-mail, then remembers he’s taken the day off—Stephanie’s idea and a good one. His chest loosens. His heart slows. He can breathe.

  Careful not to disturb Stephanie, Tony slides out of bed. He knows the moment she opens her eyes the morning will be flooded with preparations for their weekend away—luggage, clothes, dinner reservations. He will be asked to check the timers on the sprinklers then go fill up the car and bring it around front to load. He will keep his mouth shut when he sees how much his wife and children are bringing for their three-night escape.

  Tony knows how the weekend will go. Once they are on the road heading north he will relax. He will enjoy the ride, enjoy the lunch spot Stephanie picked. He will enjoy the complimentary glass of wine at the hotel.

  The weekend will be flawless. It will have no surprises. There will be no talk of Tony’s breakdown or of their impounded car. On Sunday Tony will wake with the same panic in his chest as today. He will try to tamp it down while Stephanie checks her watch, counting the minutes until she has to begin to coordinate their packing.

  Tony slips into the bathroom and puts on his running clothes. He figures he can fit in a long run, maybe even ten miles, and be back in time to help mobilize his family. He logs into his Map My Run app, chooses his “Long, Slow, Steady” playlist of rock anthems, and slides his smartphone into an arm strap. He slips a credit card, a house key, some cash, and his ID into the pouch behind his phone—precautions Stephanie insists on.

  In the living room he checks to see if Danielle has left her laptop out, if he might scroll through her social media outlets for more footage of the naked jogger, scanning the blurry videos for a fleeting shot of himself. The computer is nowhere in sight. He goes to her room, cracks the door. He watches her sleeping, the soft rise-fall of her bedspread. He can see her laptop winking on her desk across the room. He leaves it.

  Tony steps out onto the lawn. The only hangover from yesterday’s run is a slight sting in each shin. He stretches his calves against the eucalyptus tree in the yard then hops foot to foot, testing the spring in his step. The music is pumping in his ears, helping his adrenaline rise to meet the needs of his run. He jogs to the end of the driveway and looks up and down the street. Other than a cat scurrying between the garbage bins, he is the only thing moving.

  Normally, he heads south, under the 10 and toward the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Center where he carves a five-mile loop through the three-hundred-acre park before heading home. But today he doesn’t want to escape the city so he heads north, toward Pico, a busy east-west boulevard usually avoided by runners.

  From his cocoon of music, Tony watches the city get into gear—delivery trucks, lumbering buses, the early commuters heading off in their cars. As he turns onto Pico, he passes a woman pushing a tamale cart. He watches a white van pull to the curb and a man lean out the driver’s window calling to the vendor.

  Tony whips off his headphones. Now he can hear the vendor crying, “TA-MA-LAYS,” as each car passes her stand. He can hear the rumble and sigh of the buses, the birds calling down the morning, the guard dogs barking behind cyclone fences. He can hear a car speeding ahead and a siren wailing. He can hear his breath and his heartbeat in his ears, the internal soundtrack of his run. No longer controlled by the rhythm of his music, he picks up the pace.

  He turns right on Pico, passing shopping centers and shuttered taco stands. He runs through a Hassidic neighborhood with Glatt supermarkets, orthodox schools, even kosher Thai and pizza restaurants.

  The miles slide by. He doesn’t bother to check his app to see if he should turn back. He passes car washes and a few big-box stores and soon he’s in an unfamiliar section of Pico, run-down and gritty, part Mexican and part black with old burger and pastrami stands, their windows greasy and cracked. He passes a row of upholstery shops and used appliance stores. He passes El Salvadoran panaderías, Oaxacan panaderías, and dozens of carnicerías. He runs by Pentecostal storefront churches, a large Ethiopian church, a Greek Orthodox cathedral.

  He’s run at least six miles. He should turn back, pick up the pace, get home, but his legs are loose, his breath easy. His feet keep moving.

  He’s back in Pico-Union—the neighborhood of Honduran and Salvadoran restaurants, calling centers, pawnshops, and places advertising CASH PAYDAY LOANS where the cops had caught up to him. He passes the L.A. Convention Center, a green-glass-and-white-steel behemoth that straddles Pico.

  To his left are the downtown office towers, their tops i
lluminated by the first glint of sun. To his right, the wholesale district. In five blocks Pico dead-ends at Main. Tony takes a left. He runs a few blocks then heads east into the heart of Skid Row. He’s not sure if he could have predicted it when he took off, but his jog ends at the police station.

  He checks his phone. He’s run over nine miles, averaging below eight minutes per. It’s a solid outing. He’ll log it into his app and one of his online training buddies will comment: Good effort, bro. Beast.

  He ignores the looks he gets from the homeless packing up their tents as he does a few stretches against the low wall outside the station. For a moment he’s ashamed of the luxury of time, of being able to run unencumbered by the basic necessities of survival.

  But he’s not entirely unencumbered, not really. He’s still plagued by the worries of his family and his job, his panic that he’s flatlining and dragging his wife and kids with him. No matter where or how far he runs, he always arrives back at this. He’s ashamed that the problems of people toughing it out on the street make him think of his own. Life is turning him into an asshole. And this is another problem.

  He wipes the sweat from his forehead and heads into the dim interior of the precinct. There are a few people waiting to talk to one of the desk sergeants. A couple of tourists are trying to locate a lost passport. And good luck with that. A young man is complaining that the window of his car was smashed outside a bar last night. A middle-aged woman is trying to report a crime that sounds like it only happened in her imagination. When an officer emerges from the back to lead her away, Tony approaches the desk and asks to speak to Detective Addison. He tells the sergeant that he’s a lawyer and needs Addison’s help with a case. The desk sergeant gives him a look—assessing his running clothes, his sweaty body, his flushed face. Then he pages the detective.