by Anne Valente
Rhiannon is silent and Billie takes the feather from her hands. The bats surely still beating toward the moon and outward to the valley. Billie closes her eyes and there is only the soft pulse of their webbed wings, the hardest sound she’s heard since she cut Alabama’s line and listened to her take flight in the backyard’s stillness. It cracks her open. The feather in her palms. The bats cycloning through the dark above them. It cracks her open like her mother knew it would.
ORENSTEIN, BRIAN. “ECHOLOCATION IN MICROCHIROPTERAN BATS.” NORTH AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY: A GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF AMERICA. ED. JAMES BURCH. NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1994. 22–26. PRINT.
CALL NUMBER: QL670 .G520 1994
ECHOLOCATION IN MICROCHIROPTERAN BATS
Microchiropterans are an order of bats distinguished from megabats by their smaller size, their use of sonar, and the presence of a tragus, a small point on the external ear that funnels sound. Microbats use echolocation to find food, usually in complete darkness once night falls. They generate sonar through their larynx and nasal passages, bouncing off potential prey to determine distance. Because a single crèche habitat can contain up to two hundred bats per square foot, mother bats also use echolocation to find their pups.
32.1757° N, 104.3766° W:
Whites City, NM
Rhiannon lets Billie help her pitch the tent in the dark. This second night of camping, not what Rhiannon promised: she vows to find Billie a clean hotel once they finally cross into Utah. They’ve parked the Mustang in Whites City, an RV park named after the man who allegedly discovered Carlsbad Caverns. So many towns out here bearing the names of explorers. The same as racing, the same as paleontology and falconry. The mythology of American men, the West never intended for anyone else, never meant for her or for Billie. They’ve stopped here for a lack of options and dined at the RV park’s restaurant. Rhiannon ordering a burger and cold fries, Billie across the booth eating only soda crackers. And now she thrusts herself into pitching the tent and Rhiannon wonders if she even knows how to anchor a stake into the ground.
I can take care of this, Rhiannon says.
Billie twists two aluminum poles together. I’m fine.
Rhiannon says nothing more and wonders what it was about the feather that shook her sister so hard. A message from their mother, as clear as anything else: that Rhiannon wasn’t the only one who needed a soft push. But Billie’s silence is a surprise. Rhiannon can’t remember the last time she saw her cry. Not in high school over boys. Not over fights with friends. Not even in Colorado Springs, her reaction only rage. When they at last raise the poles and the tent’s mesh stretches into a dome, Billie grabs their sleeping bags from the trunk and unrolls them on the tarp and they lie in the tent’s dark, the rain flap open and filled with stars. The half-moon glows through the ceiling’s mesh, each constellation a string of small pins.
Which ones are those? Rhiannon asks.
The bright one is Arcturus.
Where’s the Big Dipper?
Billie points higher along the tent’s ceiling. It’s farther up in the sky, she says. We can’t see it. The Big Dipper’s handle slopes down to Arcturus.
Rhiannon huddles deeper into her sleeping bag, the desert growing cold. How did you learn all that?
You know how I learned it, Billie says. I read a lot of books.
But it’s been years since you’ve been able to stargaze.
I had a window. Billie nods at the rain flap. A small opening like this one.
Rhiannon hesitates. Billie, what’s wrong?
Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.
You didn’t seem fine in the car. You don’t seem fine now.
Billie rolls onto her side, her back to her sister. Rhiannon hears her sigh. I can’t believe Mom led us down here just to throw the past in my face, Billie whispers.
I don’t think she meant to make you feel bad.
It’s not just Mom. It’s everything.
What’s everything?
Billie is quiet for so long that Rhiannon thinks she’s fallen asleep. Rhiannon watches more stars begin to salt the sky, the moon’s light pulsing through the rain flap.
What has your relationship with Dad been like? Billie finally says.
You mean lately?
I guess so. The last six years.
It’s been fine. We don’t talk about a lot of things. We don’t talk about Beth or Mom. But we understand each other. He understood what racing meant to me.
I don’t think Dad understands anything about me.
That’s not true.
It is. It’s completely true.
Is that what’s bothering you?
I don’t know. It was hard to hear his voice the other day. Everything is hard. It’s so fucking hard to be out here. It’s a lot. All at once.
I know, Rhiannon whispers.
Those bats should have made me think of Mom. She’s the one who led us down here. She’s the one who left that feather for me to find. But all I could think of was Dad. Walking through the woods with him when we were little. How I always thought it was Mom who made us want things, but now I’m not so sure.
They were so different. It’s clear Dad was threatened sometimes by Mom’s accomplishments. But they both wanted things. They both had drive.
I know. And knowing that out here, right now? I just feel lost. I feel so much pressure to feel something. To do something. From two people who aren’t even here.
Rhiannon nods in the dark. Every time I talk to Dad, he mentions Bryson Townes. The new driver he’s helping to train. He keeps saying I could have been like him. I could have still been on the circuit winning every race.
At least Dad gets what you do. I don’t feel like he ever got me at all.
Rhiannon turns to her. When did you ever feel closest to him?
Billie rolls onto her back and looks up into the darkness. I remember what it was like to hike with him. That’s what I kept thinking about at the cave. How there was a time when he showed me how to love everything outdoors.
That was all you. That was your thing. Yours and his and Mom’s.
But you and Dad had racing. I still remember the first time he set you down in a Soap Box Derby car.
You remember that? You couldn’t have been older than three.
I knew that was your time. Your space. Dad and I had the woods. But ever since I became a teenager, I don’t think he’s known how to talk to me.
It’s not like he and I talk about relationships or anything else in life.
But you talk about racing.
You think telling me I could’ve been great is talking about racing?
At least it connects you. He understands you. He never visited me once.
I know.
Billie turns away from the sky and looks at Rhiannon. Do you?
I don’t know why, Billie. I never asked him. We never talked about it.
Do you know how much that hurt?
Rhiannon shakes her head.
I always thought it was because he hated me.
He doesn’t hate you.
It’s been so much easier to hate him back.
Billie, he wanted so badly to talk to you the other morning.
But not for the past six years?
I know. I don’t know why he never came.
Because he was ashamed of me.
You had your reasons for doing what you did. Remember that.
And you had your reasons for leaving the racetrack. But you didn’t burn down a fucking library. He’s always been prouder of you.
Rhiannon sighs. Is that what this is about?
Jesus, Rhee, no. But come on. You did something, the same way they both did something with their lives. I’ve never been able to do anything.
Did. I did something. Something I’m not doing at all anymore. And what you’re saying isn’t even true. They were both so proud of you. And anyway, don’t discount completely different circumstances.
What circumstances?
No one
ever hit me.
I could have left Tim sooner. And it’s not like I had a big wellspring of drive before I met him.
No one ever thinks to leave sooner. Jesus, Billie. It wasn’t your fault.
Look, I know. But what I’m talking about precedes even Tim. It wasn’t the library or prison that distanced me and Dad. I felt lost to him as soon as I entered high school.
You were a teenager. Teenagers aren’t supposed to do anything.
You did. You were already racing in high school.
Rhiannon is quiet a moment. You could call him.
I don’t want to call him. I want him to call me.
Rhiannon imagines their father in Illinois, not knowing at all that the wedding ring he sought has been hidden for months beneath a statue in Forest Park.
Didn’t those bats make you want to die? Billie whispers and Rhiannon doesn’t know what she means but the stars above them are so luminous they make Rhiannon feel humbled and small. Everything out here so much larger than them, her brain catching on what it was to forget herself in something. The wonder their parents wanted for each of them: Tires skidding against the pavement. A wheel’s torque curving around a racetrack. Or else the weight of a falcon on Billie’s arm. Miraculous. The same as a swirl of bats cycloning toward dusk.
RHIANNON AWAKENS TO morning heat filtering through the tent’s mesh, her mouth dry and her head heavy with dreaming. A dream of Beth. Beth folding clothes for donation piles. Beth helping her sort through discarded recipes and forgotten photographs and old holiday cards. A reverie, Rhiannon disentangling every one of her mother’s boxes on her own. She imagines Beth in the small studio of their former apartment making woodcuts from the materials of the Midwest. Maple and oak. Wheat and prairie grass. Art working in tandem with the land, the language Beth used on so many of her artist statements. Why she was drawn to a land sculpture like the Spiral Jetty, an art book always on their coffee table that Rhiannon barely noticed, her mind focused instead on mechanics and facts. The precision of racing. The sale of textbooks, all numbers and invoices. Rhiannon sits up and shakes away the dream and Billie is nowhere, her sleeping bag already rolled. When Rhiannon unzips the tent, Billie is sitting in the grass, knees triangled against the ground, holding the feather in her palms.
Morning, Rhiannon says.
Billie glances back. Sleep well?
I guess I did. You?
Better than I thought I would. But I wouldn’t mind sleeping in a bed tonight.
That’s fine. I budgeted enough for motels at least half the nights. You okay?
Billie smiles. Mom’s really offering us a swift kick out here, isn’t she? All these hidden objects. These wide-open spaces. So much fucking time in the car, Rhee. She knew we couldn’t avoid it.
Avoid what?
Billie looks at her. Ourselves. Mom knew we couldn’t avoid ourselves.
Rhiannon thinks of her dream, Beth beside her. I know, she says.
Billie twists the feather in her hands. Is it possible to feel elated and horrible all at once? I’m out here. I’m fucking out here but Mom’s gone. It was so much easier to pretend like she was still here when I was in Decatur.
How?
Nothing ever changes there. But out here? Billie motions to the sky. We’ve been in a different state every single day. Everything’s changing. And Mom’s not here.
Rhiannon closes her eyes. Everything changing. Her relationship. Their family. Billie here now. A locket. A stegosaurus’s tail bone. The weather.
Where are we headed next?
North, Billie says. Surely north. That’s all I know.
Did you look at the journal?
Not yet. The GPS signal has been intermittent out here, but we know we have to head back the way we came. Highway 285 is the only route north.
There’s cell service in Roswell. That’s not far, and it’s on the way back. We can reroute when we get there. You hungry?
Billie shakes her head. I can wait. We can stop later to break up the trip.
Then let’s pack up. We can eat in Roswell. It might be the biggest town until we cross into Colorado and Utah. And anyway, I need to change the oil. We’re nearing the three-thousand-mile mark. Engine problems are the last thing we need out here.
Billie nods and Rhiannon turns to break down the tent and leaves her sister in the grass, the feather still twirling in her hands.
IN ROSWELL, RHIANNON drives until she spots a Valvoline Instant Oil Change, a chain she knows will be expensive but quick. It’s only Wednesday, plenty of time to get to the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry and back to Illinois but Carlsbad is a detour she didn’t expect, gas she hadn’t anticipated burning. The sun hazes over again as they travel north, the sky a marble of blue and dust.
She pulls into the Valvoline’s garage, a tunnel of gauges and hydraulic jacks not unlike the service centers of pit stops. Rhiannon could change the oil herself, a skill she learned from her father in high school. But it would take dirtied clothes, so few shirts she’s brought on the road, and time she and Billie don’t have. She lets the mechanics tell her where to pull up the car and stop. Billie sits beside her holding the GPS, waiting for its service to catch up with Rhiannon’s cell phone back in range.
A man in a gray jumpsuit approaches the driver’s-side window. Morning, he says.
Rhiannon nods. Just an oil change, please.
You in the system?
We’re passing through. Just need a quick change.
The man pulls out a clipboard and Rhiannon notices how young he is, maybe nineteen, his beard only thin stubble. You want the full-service synthetic?
Just your standard.
He leans into the window. I’d really suggest the synthetic blend, ma’am, especially for the Mustang you have here. Desert’s hard on a car.
I know. Rhiannon smiles. Like I said, just the standard.
Really, I’d recommend the synthetic. Plus a full-service maintenance check for you girls out on the road for the transmission fluid, the brakes, the tire pressure—
Standard oil, Rhiannon says. I have a tire gauge in my glove box. And your maintenance check comes with every oil change, standard or premium.
The man pulls away. Fine. Standard oil it is.
Rhiannon rolls up the window.
Bet you’ve heard that pitch before, Billie says, not looking up.
These fucking mechanics.
You can’t expect them to know who you are.
Does it matter?
Not to them. Billie grins. You’re just a little lady in a little car.
Rhiannon feels the thorn of her anger diffuse quickly. You girls. The road all machismo. Route 66. Harley-Davidson. Born to Be Wild. The myth of American freedom. And NASCAR, a sport she first loved as a child before knowing she shouldn’t. Each speedway a microcosm for everything she hated about this country: thrown beads. Playboy bunnies. An entire thoroughfare of McDonald’s and Burger King, not a single tree in sight. Coors Light. Beef jerky. Men taking up every inch of space like they ruled the raceway, men naming every monument and town out here after themselves. A legacy of owning. Rhiannon recalls the Confederate flags bannered above RVs. The slurs tossed casually between men sharing beers. The palpable racism. The tangible homophobia. The sport’s long history of white male racers, what fans would call an upheld tradition and what she knew to be the fragility of gatekeeping. Rhiannon feels her hands tighten around the Mustang’s wheel, ashamed of everything about racing that she nonetheless once loved. The speed of the engine. What made a car work. Being part of that culture made her culpable regardless. She glances at a sliver of sky barely visible from the Valvoline station. Beyond hatred and discrimination, NASCAR criticized consistently for emissions and pollution, for lead additives in gas. The mechanic moves around the car, checking the tires before popping the hood and inspecting the fuel levels, and Rhiannon feels liable even here out on the road, the Mustang’s emissions adding to an already-turbulent atmosphere. Billie keeps her head bent over the GPS a
nd Rhiannon looks away from the mechanic and checks her cell phone, nearly one full day out of service range and barely any emails. She recalls her dream. No messages from Beth. No checking in at all. What she expected but the silence still smarts.
There it is, Billie says, holding up the GPS. We’re back in range.
Billie pulls the journal from the bag near her feet and flips it open to the next page and Rhiannon can’t help but strain to see the number of pages beyond the one Billie opens, how many more coordinates their mother has planned. She leans back against the headrest as the Mustang hums with hydraulics, the mechanic working below the car. Maybe Billie was right. Maybe their mother gave Billie the journal for a reason. Rhiannon would have flipped to the last page. The coordinates useless, a collection of locations they’d never stop to see. Billie leans over the journal and Rhiannon realizes what she hates to admit: that despite the miles and a bar fight and the unexpected need to change the oil, this version of the trip wouldn’t have happened without Billie.
Billie extends the journal’s next page across the center console. This is where we’re headed next.
Rhiannon glances at the open page’s new coordinate, latitudes and longitudes that make no sense to her. And the drawing: a crude scrawl of small footprints, one after the other.
Looks like tracks, she says. Just like Smoky Hill River. Some kind of dinosaur.
Billie grabs Rhiannon’s phone and plugs the coordinate into the digital map.
Where are we headed? Rhiannon asks. Straight to the quarry?
Almost. Looks like we’re stopping in Moab first.
Southern Utah? At least it’s on the way.
Have you been there before?
The car drones with the surrounding sound of the service station’s motorized equipment and Rhiannon recalls only the wideness of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Not Utah. On all her roadway travels Rhiannon has never seen Arches or Canyonlands or any of Utah’s national parks, all of them too far off the interstates. She remembers only standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, a brief stop she and her father made on their way back from a competition in Las Vegas. Her first two years of college. Intermittent online courses to make up for time spent away from Chicago. She’d broken up for the first time with a woman, a girl named Shawna in her freshman-year Anthropology 101 class, one of her only in-person courses and a lecture hall of nearly four hundred people and Rhiannon happened to sit right next to the first girl she dated openly for just over a year until Shawna called her crying from Chicago saying that she’d cheated, that she’d met someone else. A boy, Rhiannon remembers now, as clearly as she recalls taking the phone call late in Vegas after she’d won second place in an early race of the Nationwide Series season and standing the next day at the edge of the Grand Canyon with her father and feeling her eyes burn, the swift dagger of heartbreak.