The Way Out

by Craig Childs

  Waterfalls poured from all sides, from storm drains opening above. A shopping cart tumbled by, smashing into me. The gunwales dipped, took on water, and I pitched my weight. The channel banked into a long curve, its surface churning and foam-covered. Made of broken rock penned tightly with chain link, the canal walls had no steps or ladders leading out. They forced the water down the middle as if the place were a constricted bedrock canyon, leaving no escape. Unable to pause, breathe, or eddy, this water coiled into knots full of debris. I searched for the order, for the customary patterns I would expect in a wilderness flood. There were none. Entropy is not to be underestimated.

  I sped through the first underground passage, a dark corridor, the flood loud and sloshing. Out the other side, I paddled hard around an incoming waterfall of trash and mud. There is a way out of here, I thought. Always a way. If there was not, I would die. Far better to die in this canal, the suddenness igniting my soul, than to waste away in a deepening hall of mirrors as my father had.

  The Sixteenth Street Bridge came into view. A logjam of trapped branches and garbage bucked around its piers. The water boiled, allowing no breathing room between the debris and the underside of the bridge. Foam slapped onto the overpass sidewalk. I ruddered the paddle along the right side, slipping the canoe’s body diagonal to the current. I studied the path between here and there.

  The outcome was clear. There was no way to pass beneath this bridge. There was no way to stop before getting there. The canoe would be taken under. My body, I imagined, would be found hanging from racks of shopping carts and soaked tree trimmings.

  But there must be another way through here, another outcome. There had to be. It was the solidity I sought in nature, the path within the ferment. I searched for it, back-paddling from one side to the next. A deep strain of fear took me. I don’t like this part, the not finding.

  A predator was sprinting one swipe behind my legs. I had thought that it was my father all along, that he was the one I feared. But he was gone now. The equation, flavored in adrenaline, ran quickly through my head. I realized that something was truly hunting me. It tasted like sweat. I felt it needling at my chest.

  Don’t let me die, Father. Not here. Not today.

  I drove the paddle into the water on my left side, swinging the bow straight upstream, fighting the current, slowing just a bit more, with all of my strength. But not enough. The bridge was approaching.

  My river instincts failed me. I looked for the slightest eddy, some twist of current I could grab. There was nothing. This was not a river. My customary escape routes did not exist here. I purposefully leaned my body too far upstream.

  Water rushed the gunwales.

  The canoe flipped.

  I jumped clear, landing in the water.

  Arms and legs instantly wrapped around me. A frenzy of wild children snatched and pulled. The canoe was gone. A sudden taste of dog urine and motor oil filled my mouth. I tried to sputter it out, but I was underwater. My paddle stayed in my right hand—a river rule that I refused even now to ignore: Never let go of the paddle, never. I thrust and parried with it, using it for leverage against the flow, but there was no flow to negotiate. The canal was filled with madness.

  I could not swim this. I could not reach the surface. Swift vortices played at my back. A hollow gulp of water drew me to the floor as if a whale had swept beneath me, pulling me down.

  I stabbed the paddle upstream like a wand. It sent word through its shaft, into my hand, telling me of the shape of this water, its speeds and trajectories. I became aware that I was listening to the paddle faster than I could possibly think. My body was responding, shooting commands through me. Time changed. The distance between events widened. Whirlpools touched me from above and below, and I followed them away, feeling their spinning nets of turbulence.

  My conscious mind remained aware of the quickness at hand. I was in a sandstorm, an avalanche, a flood. My landscape was nothing but squalls and convulsions, my lungs empty. I swirled and pushed, feeling the grate of the wall against my back. I swung the paddle into the wall, snapping and seizing with my free hand and my feet. A muscle tore in my ankle. I felt a fingernail splinter all the way to its root.

  I grabbed between currents and chain-link metal, slowing myself. Finally, I found a solid grip. A bulwark of water instantly gathered against me. The water sent the rest of my body downstream as my hand held the fence wire. I was stretched tight, body to hand to wall. I worked back upstream until both of my hands and feet were secure in the steel mesh, the paddle wedged between hand and wire. Climbing up far enough, I cleared my neck and head. Floodwater sped over my shoulders. I lifted my mouth and gasped at the air.

  I looked downstream. I seemed no closer to the bridge now than when I had jumped. The canoe was still in view, rolling like a log. How long had I been in? It could not have been more than six or seven seconds, judging by the distance. But it had been a few minutes at least judging by memory. I had been stretched and re-formed, and now I was back, clinging like a barnacle to the side of this storm drain.

  The canoe gathered speed into the bridge. It lifted onto a crest. Then it struck the entangled bridge debris. The stern rolled and jerked underwater, causing the bow suddenly to stand. The canoe fell back on itself and vanished beneath the surface.

  I looked at my hand clinging to the wall, the other one free with the paddle, at the watercolor drain of blood from cuts and the snare of a fingernail. The blood told me that this time I had barely slipped the trap. I had been made by my father into a runner, someone clever and quick, and this time I had narrowly made my escape. My body was not pressed dead around a bridge piling right now. I had found my way through the chaos.

  I climbed to the street. Cars sprayed arcs of rainwater as they passed. With a limp I crossed at the Sixteenth Street intersection when the white OK-to-cross light came on. I walked a couple of blocks, clothes torn and soaked, one hand dripping blood, one holding a wooden paddle.

  At a corner gas station I found a pay phone and made a collect call home. They were beginning to wonder where I had gone. No one had noticed the missing canoe. I did not explain. I asked if someone could come with a car because I was a few miles away. And a towel, please, one that won’t mind the stain of blood.

  DAY TWO

  Sunrise. Sitting in the cab of the Bronco, Dirk and I exhale thin, faint cirrus clouds of breath. We are parked in front of a general store at the meeting of roads on an Arizona Indian reservation, one belonging to the Diné. The building has no sign out front, just a dirt parking lot. It is known among people here as the Crossroads, dropped onto the countryside as if out of an airplane, a lone building that unfolded into place as soon as it hit the ground. Everything else is horizons of sparse juniper trees and the endless red of the earth. Good country for nomads, open range where winter-rugged livestock grazes the roadside, where a person can start walking and stop only when it is time. Luckily, the Diné had settled a piece of land barren enough not to interest the U.S. government or its homesteaders. After the deathly 1800s busywork of marching tribes here and there across the continent, the Diné were finally given back their land, as if handed some bitter, useless artifact no one was willing to steal.

  Last night we slept off a side road on the reservation, Dirk in the back of the Bronco and me on the ground under the joined arms of a juniper copse. My water bottle froze all the way through. I should have known better and kept it warm with my body through the night. I keep it on the dashboard now so it can thaw.

  The inside of the cab softens with the volcanic light of early morning. I shield my eyes with the lowered brim of my hat. Dirk looks like an odd wizard. He wears an expertly machined pair of sunglasses and a pointy wool cap from his wife’s recent trek to the Andes.

  We wait in the increasing light, watching for a blue Chevy truck. The truck will be driven by a Diné man. This man will lead us down one of these unmarked roads to the home of his grandfather, an old sheepherder who still sings the original
ceremonies. He is called a singer, a healer, a shaman. His permission is required for walking across a certain stretch of desert, ground considered sacred to the Diné. We need to talk with him.

  Trucks are parked along the building front in a horse-tether row. I tell Dirk that I am going to pick up a sack of flour, and I leave him, moving into the cut-dry air, the barren warmth of sunrise. Inside the store are aisles of canned food, and my eyes have to adjust to the assault of colors and brand names. Faces of Diné men and women seem bored and busy with their first tasks of the day, their skin the russet of polished saddle leather. Coffee is sipped, ranch jackets worn thin.

  When I lift a cotton sack of Bluebird flour onto my shoulder, a woman bundled warm smiles and says it looks like I’m going to be making some fry bread. I tell her that it’s a gift for a sheepherder who lives north of here. Maybe she knows him, a man who still sings the Protectionway ceremony. She nods, having heard of him. She does not bother asking why I am bringing flour to him. People go to the Protectionway for their own reasons.

  Outside I drop the flour into a box in back, adding it to the other dry goods we have brought: pistachios and pinto beans and coffee. Kept in an ice chest so it would not freeze is a stock of fruits and vegetables. I look through them, opening the chest, pulling bags from the box, wondering if these gifts are adequate. This is our offering to the singer for his blessing. It feels like a bribe.

  I shovel myself into the front seat. Dirk has opened his jacket to accept some of the warmth from the rising sun. I mention that everyone in line at the counter drank coffee and smelled of livestock. Sheepherding country, I say.

  Dirk responds that he hates the way we all wait in lines. Such a ludicrous fascination of ours, waiting one behind the next for some dangling carrot. I can tell by his tone that he is about to start into one of his stories, by the way his body turns slightly toward me, an exaggerated pause of contemplation. I brace myself. We are about to go somewhere, a sixty-second journey through Dirk’s mind. I know better than to say anything.

  “I had to get this backcountry permit at some visitors’ center,” he says. “There were these other people in line ahead of me, and I had to listen as one by one they stepped to the ranger desk, explaining that they had only a certain amount of time, asking which trail was nicer, which had the most scenic viewpoints, which had toilets, wooden steps, shade, cell phone reception.”

  Here comes the kicker; I hear it. The anger in his voice, the obvious flaws of human nature that he wants to expose as if he were a fire hose blasting away at civilization.

  “What the fuck? Cell phone reception?” he complains, not to me, but to his pitted windshield. “All that shit has become normal. The ability to grab something and punch a button and boom, you’re wired. You can get your stock reports. You can talk to any person in the world you want. You can get a weather report. You can summon the powers from above to your exact point on the map. We want to get back into nature? We want to experience the outdoors? We’re so addicted to information and knowing everything a person can possibly know that we can’t just say oh, here’s a nature trail, let’s go check it out.”

  His voice jumps a notch louder. “It’s a trail! There’re no mines! There’re no fucking lava pits! You can walk on it for exactly the amount of time you want to walk on it. Which hike takes an hour? You can probably stay on that trail for three or four days, for half a goddamned year. I don’t know, you gonna stop to fuck? Might take an hour and a half.”

  I imagine him standing in the visitors’ center dismayed, hands in pockets, the people getting their permission and walking past him wondering why he is staring at them with those eyes, with that buzz of disturbance.

  Now, the letdown part of his story. His body relaxes. He shakes his head, drawing his voice into a quiet tone. Now he sounds like a man explaining a bit of thoughtful philosophy.

  “There are certain minds that just rail against that shit; then there are others that sink down into it like a cozy comforter. There’re always going to be us crazy ones who don’t want a railing to keep them from falling off the edge. Who don’t want a trail to stare at like an amusement park ride. Who don’t feel normal until they leave the road, pass through the air lock, escape quarantine, and go running naked.”

  I look over at his form, still heavy in cold-morning clothes. Traveling with Dirk is like standing in a public restroom, glancing up, and being stung by a curt and grossly relevant comment scrawled on the wall.

  A blue Chevy truck pulls to our side. The bed is empty except for a battered red gas can and some old chains. A Diné man sits behind the wheel and looks at us. I step out and walk to him as he rolls down his window.

  “Yateh,” I say, reaching out a hand.

  “Ya’at’eeh,” he responds, shaking my hand in return. He glances slowly around, not really looking for anything. “Cold this morning.”

  “We slept up higher,” I say. “There’s still some snow.”

  He looks at Dirk’s Bronco, seeing on its tires various ages of sprayed dog urine. His own tires have identical markings. Dirk comes around in his wizard outfit, the same thing that he will be wearing for the next few weeks, likely for the rest of the winter. He pulls off his sunglasses and shakes the man’s hands.

  The man says, “Why don’t you follow me.”

  Dirk says, “We’ll be right behind you.”

  We slip back into the Bronco. The blue Chevy leads us down a washboard road. A cattle guard buzzes under us. Barbs of elegant canyons spill off both sides of the road, multiplying into each other, cutting open a new landscape, which falls apart for the next landscape, and the next beyond that. Scarps of earth stand far off.

  I can feel it here. The land is opening. The distant cliffs become more numerous, cracking away from each other. There are stands of wind-battered buttes farther off. I have never been down this road, but I have wondered what it would be like to walk out beyond it. For years I have hiked to the tops of buttes and peaks, looking south from Utah, seeing an emptiness on this horizon, only a few dark mulls of mountains as faint as mirages and nothing else. Thunderstorms rise from here in the summer.

  The first time I saw this particular country was during the flight to my father’s funeral. As it began I saw places below where I had slept and walked in my life. The larger space-bound features of the Earth became visible out of Colorado and into Utah, as if a fetus were kicking beneath the belly skin of the planet. There were no ant swarms of cities and in-between towns, only faintly cut dirt roads, and then none for a while; another plane a thousand feet higher, heading in the other direction; and the metal-rust and mustard colors of desert.

  I remember staring out the airplane’s tiny window, eyes soothed by the relentless thievery of desert erosion. Slender buttes and fins lifted from the ground as if a razor blade had been slipped around them. They were colored in Chablis, their hues bleaching into everything, reddening the mud-dark rivers that skimmed the surface and cut down through harder rock into obscure gorges. I saw the serpent curves of Utah cliffs, their embryonic hollows black in shadow. I saw exactly where I, as a teenager, had lain naked in a remote canyon, where I had walked in bare feet until blisters and gouges wore into hard soles. I had called this place the Blood Desert back then, red from the same minerals that darken my own blood, the pigments that give hematite its dusky shine, the color of iron hungrily burned by water and wind.

  The Earth seemed even sharper to my eye now that I bore the weight of my father’s death. I remember peering out the small oval window as if it were the only way to survive, knowing that the plane would eventually land in Phoenix and I would be mortal again. My father had taught me about the sky, going on about the movement of stars and the gravity of planets, waving his hand in the air around black holes and neutron stars. He found it curious that we believed we had conquered gravity when we built airplanes, as if we had not noticed that we are still held firmly to the Earth, that we keep dropping things and breaking them. He was the sort of man
who once told me he watched ghosts dance in the desert. When I came to him with peculiar dreams, he would nod and say to me that he had seen the same thing. I believed he was a prophet. He said that we live within an invisible world, and sometimes our eyes are caught by what seems to be nothing, our heads turning to movement that is not there. He told me that I am supposed to live in both worlds, both the visible and invisible. You will do both was a mantra he chanted to me in my earliest memories, a command that lasted through even his most drunken decades, through his final years of violent thrashing while his wife waited in the bedroom, gun cocked and in her hand, waiting for the door to open, waiting to put a bullet through my father and end his madness.

  While I watched out the window, I lost track, thinking of my father, eyes roaming the pale colors. Suddenly I could no longer identify the ridges, the plains of waterless sand. I had never walked in this place. Were we in Arizona or Utah? The window was not large enough for me to see the entire surrounding earth, so for that moment, I had no idea where we were. Somewhere south. We had yet to hit the thunderstorm clouds of the lower desert.

  A gathering of canyons came into view, like the oblique sprawl of a city. I sat up. A maze formed beneath me as we flew, a landscape of incredible difficulty. My mind was immediately racing. It was indeed a city, skyscrapers and buttes of factories, house boulders and deep passageways into subterranean sewers. This city was made of stone. It was abandoned. If I were to walk there, I would be in Manhattan with no other living person anywhere, my footsteps echoing in the dark subway of canyons, climbing cliff-face stairways in unoccupied buildings.

  So this is what lay on that empty horizon I had looked at so many times. It seemed remotely like some of the places I had traveled: a canyon-bound geography, barren bedrock composed of familiar, massive sandstone. But it appeared to be far more compressed and immense than any place I had visited. It looked like steroid-fed roots forced to grow in too small a pot. Canyons led impossibly back into themselves, confined and writhing like adders in a basket. Up-striking blades of rock just as suddenly inverted to shadow. I quickly gathered information, triangulating off distant landmarks so that I could later go to a map and pinpoint this exact location. I would have to find my way there.