Whirling

Devon wore the boat hat—blue with Saint Augustine’s school insignia, two white oars crossed on an embroidered field of gold. Despite the ranger’s booming voice, Devon had trouble making out the words over the heads of his classmates. He couldn’t see the ranger’s lips, hear his intonations. He turned away and watched a bird land, skitter across the path, and disappear over the ledge.

Father Leahy scanned the class, perpetually focused on the class’s comportment as he believed it to be a reflection of him. Devon’s mother was watching too, a peripheral set of eyes. Devon’s arms were draped over his knees. He was in his own world. When he spoke, his speech often suffered from elision, syllables eclipsed, cut off, left behind. Devon reached for a rock in the sand, grazing the spindly arm of a cactus.

“Don’t touch that,” Rita said. Her face was sharp, and he drew his hand back. Rita remembered when his father had stepped on a cholla cactus off-trail, his toes coated in needles, the spines hooking ever deeper into his flesh, under the nails, into the soft ankle skin. The spines can leap toward prey, be mistaken for blades of grass, and embed their fine, barbed, hair-like glochids anywhere—they can even catch in your throat.

The ranger talked about the stratigraphy of the flat layers, the tectonic upheaval, a collision which occurred 1.7 billion years ago, the breakup of a supercontinent. Devon was watching a kettle of turkey vultures riding a thermal wave. Rita inhaled audibly. They’d come all this way.

“You wanna get closer up, so you can listen?” She stood and reached for his hand, but he resisted. She turned to take in the vast layered rock before her, millions of years of compression. She glanced back at her boy, he pretended he didn’t see her watching him. Not hearing well left him in a small, darkened room of his own, where he could go to be alone—where he only faintly heard the world, as if it were mumbling prayers around him.

The sun scolded them for being where they don’t belong, in the desert heat. Devon was sitting on the rock wall near the path with the rest of his class while the ranger spoke, then he leaned closer to his mother Rita. She unscrewed the top of her water bottle and handed it to him. He took a sip and leaned forward.

“The story in the rocks,” the ranger said. Veined schists. The Great Unconformity. 650 million years ago. There are theories … Snowball Earth, a frozen planet.”

The ranger’s words hummed, dipped, and rose. Devon felt their faint vibrations at a distance—their meaning lost. At school, Devon squirreled away unnoticed. Small for his age, and with the hearing loss, he found making friends required extra work, which he wasn’t always willing to do. His father had left the family when he was five. Devon had stopped asking when his father would return. Friends had told Rita she was better off. Rita always nodded along, but secretly she believed her ex would return one day. She hadn’t seen Richard for almost three years. Still, she was Mrs. and wore the ring.

The tour ended just before 3 p.m. Students fanned out, already on the path back to the hotel. Devon sat up, turned to Rita.

“Let’s go down the trail,” he said. “Please.”

“You’re not drinking enough water.” She handed him the water bottle.

He spun the cap and took a long sip and handed it back. She stowed it in her backpack. They hadn’t fully explored the rim yet, but the day had been long and hot, and Rita needed something less challenging.

“Let’s check out the gift shop,” she said. They walked in the languorous heat. Devon took off his hat to let the sweat escape.

“Mom,”

“What?”

“Just a little ways,” he said and pointed to the dirt path that led into the canyon. “I just want to see it.” He took a few steps from her.

“No. C’mon, Devon. It’s dangerous,” she said and pulled him back. “We’ll look into it tomorrow. I have to work up to it. I can’t even stand near the edge.” From the moment they had arrived Rita felt unnerved by the depth of the canyon, the way emptiness was its own space. It was a feeling she hadn’t expected.

“I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“No!”

Devon’s face crinkled, as he walked beside her.

The gift shop was an island of cool. Attached to a traditional Hopi house, long shelves stacked with woven rugs, reed and willow baskets, dreamcatchers dangling. Devon moved toward the kachina dolls, carefully arranged, and observed them until he identified what made each one unique—round yellow eyes and birdlike wings, a green skirt with a foxtail, boots with pink tassels, twigs of spruce in the left hand. Devon knew they would be too expensive. His eyes blinked quickly, tracing possibilities.

He spun a postcard rack. Glossy sunsets, striated rock, the lodge at Phantom Ranch, an aerial photo, native dwellings. He picked that last one.

Outside the Hopi house, a crowd had formed. Devon saw a girl his own age in a yellow t-shirt, her dark hair hung from under a straw brim. She sat next to a singer on the far side of the square. A flute sounded. The singer called. A drum beat. A man in traditional dress emerged, his body bent low to the ground, stepping with high knees. He exploded upright in a twirl of fringe. He skipped across the ground hopping from foot to foot. Devon felt a jolt pulse through him. He listened to the rise and fall of the singer’s voice, in time with the drum. He moved closer to get a better view while watching the man’s body move, spin, feathers and beads in flight. Rita sat on a bench nearby, as he moved deeper into the crowd. New performers entered, oscillating into a mirror world. Devon watched them, their costumes, no two the same. He felt the beat of the drum in his chest, his waking self-riveted, but another self began to slip away, with the sounding bells, the whirling, the fringe rising as it spun. Dancers alive in the heat. They occupied an absence he felt within. Parallel to this world was another, he sensed. He wanted to fuse with it. Pure energy darted across the ground, gyrated into his moving limbs, no longer his own.

When it ended, the dancers left the square. Devon and Rita reunited and turned to head back to their hotel room. The sun was lower now, the sky haunted by another dying sun.

“Cool, huh?” she said. Devon didn’t know if she was talking about the muted colors in the sky or the dancers. He nodded, and looked back to see people emptying out, returning to whatever they’d been doing before, same as ever.

“Will we come back?” he asked.

“I have to check the itinerary.”

Rita was looking forward to getting back to the room with some time to relax before dinner. They reached their hotel in minutes, and she rummaged in her bag for the key.

“I’m going to take a bath,” she said.

Later that evening, the air still thick with heat, a tall ranger approached Father Leahy and asked him what he remembered about the afternoon and whether he noticed anything unusual about Devon earlier in the day. The ranger watched Father Leahy carefully.

“You know, the class, it’s a large group. I have to keep track of them all. My attention is often divided.” Father Leahy wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief. He pursed his lips, hunting for his words. “I know, he was there, with the group, his mother, of course. She keeps a close watch on him.”

“Did Devon say anything to you?”

“No. No, I don’t think so,” he said. “He’s a quiet kid, some hearing loss, an accident I’m told.” In truth, Father Leahy had never bothered much with Devon. The boy was nearly deaf and it affected his performance in school; Father Leahy had discounted him.

“What about Mrs. Maldonado, did you talk with her today?”

“Rita was with the group most of the time. No, I didn’t speak with her directly.” The ranger scribbled in his notebook, small lined paper. Father Leahy peered downward and took the handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead again. He felt the Arizona heat under his long, dark robe.

“Do you think he headed down the trail alone?”

“From what I gather, he showed an interest in that,” Father Leahy paused, then stiffened. “Boy needs discipline. Seems impulsive. Off on his own, no guide, no preparation, no backpack. Fools rush in …” Father Leahy stopped himself. He knew better than to say too much. The ranger touched the brim of his Stetson and tugged it down, meeting his eyes.

“You’re sure you didn’t see anything unusual?”

Father Leahy cleared his throat. In Albuquerque, long ago, there had been an accusation. Nothing was proven, it was raised and dropped. He’d been reassigned before anything further developed, transferred to a small parish in Flagstaff. A quiet place. He liked Flagstaff. He’d been able to put the whole thing behind him. Two years ago, he’d been reassigned again to Saint Augustine’s. But he’d never forget the humiliation of that initial episode. Now, he knew better. Had learned circumspection. To pass judgment was unpopular. Always trouble. Much had changed since he’d been in school, enduring his own father’s discipline.

“I didn’t see anything unusual,” he said. The ranger thanked him and scanned the area near the rim, his eyes locked on Rita, who was being coaxed by another chaperone to come sit and rest. More rangers had arrived, expanding the cordoned area.

“Mrs. Maldonado,” a ranger called to her. He waved her over.

Rita hurried towards him.

“News?” Her eyes pleaded.

“Not yet. I just want to be sure there isn’t anything else you can think of that might help us. Is anything missing?” Rita shook her head.

“No,” she shook her head. “He’s not the type to wander. He’s never done that.”

The ranger nodded. “But he asked about going down the trail?”

“Yes. Several times, he brought it up. Said he just wanted to see it. I told him it was dangerous. We were by the gift shop. We watched the dancers …” she shook her head, felt warmth flush her cheeks, her eyes burning, blurring.

“OK,” he said. “Why don’t you two wait together. I’ll keep you updated.”

Rita needed to pace. She walked back and forth inching closer to the rim, fidgeting with her hands, her ring. The sweet taffy sky mocked her. Where is he? The search team combed the area. The helicopter menaced the air as dusk settled. Darkness came, a triangular glow of light at the edges of the canyon illuminated brush and dust from the trail, but they found no trace of the boy.

Rita and Father Leahy waited inside. They had never had much to say to one another, even when Rita worked at the chapel, cleaning.

“They know what they’re doing. I’m sure they’ll find him,” Father said. Rita barely lifted her eyes. Father Leahy blinked quickly. He ventured further. “In times like these, let the Lord be a comfort.”

Rita scanned the ground. Let the Lord be a comfort. The sound of Father’s voice jarred something insider her, and she recalled an incident in the chapel when she had just started working there. He had been there. Let the Lord be a comfort. He was partially obscured by a formidable pillar. It was a glimpse, she knew, perhaps she was wrong and couldn’t imagine what it might mean for her to be right, so she’d never spoken of it to anyone. But now, she felt sure.

“Shut up,” she said.

His mother’s bathwater was running. The made beds, the icy air in the room were not welcoming. Rita had brought books for him to read. Devon went to look, Tewa Tales of Suspense! He leafed a few pages then moved to the window and pulled back the heavy curtain with the plastic rod. The rim was right there. Tufts of white clouds gave way to peach streaks in the sky. Devon wanted to be outside, under that sky. He found the water bottle in his mother’s bag and slipped out the door.

He first passed through the parking lot and slowed when he saw Father Leahy. Father was standing outside his room with another boy. Devon wasn’t sure, but thought his name was Kevin. An eighth grader, a good kickball player. Devon had seen him in the yard. He was the only one who could kick the ball over the rectory. Father Leahy rocked backwards on his heels as he spoke to Kevin, and Devon saw Father Leahy smiling. The door to Father Leahy’s room was just behind where they stood, open. Father Leahy seemed to look in Devon’s direction, but neither smiled nor waved, so Devon didn’t either. This wouldn’t be the first time Father Leahy failed to notice him. Devon had felt his eyes skip over him in class as if he were invisible.

Then Devon noticed a white pickup truck idling in the lot. The man who had performed at the plaza was inside the truck. He was wearing just a t-shirt, but Devon recognized the shape of his nose, his straight hair. He looked different in street clothes, Devon thought. Devon looked back to see Father Leahy turn and head into his room, and then Father handed an ice bucket to Kevin who walked to the ice machine behind the stairwell.

Devon could smell the exhaust filling his lungs. He crept closer to the truck. The young girl in the hat was inside too. The truck pulled out and drove away. Who else was in their family? Did they live nearby? He imagined a house where they practiced their dance, spinning in the kitchen.

The vehicle turned from the paved road onto a dirt road a quarter mile from the hotel.

Devon was no longer conscious of his feet moving beneath him. The ground blurred, his body kept time. The truck was lost to him now, the clouds of dust he’d been following, gone. The desert absorbed his steps. He scanned the earth for shapes in the rocks. He lifted his eyes to the remaining light in the sky. The immense absence. The silence. The color. A lizard darted by. The cacti stood as sentinels, muted in life. He took the trail that disappeared around a hill, tracing the narrow line between land and nothingness.

He smiled at the gentle yellow flowers of the creosote brush that poked from over the precipice. They wriggled in greeting. He drew closer to see crevices that pocked a flat wall glowing red hundreds of feet below. His eyes lifted and he drew to the light, that sky again slipping its coat, revealing a new array of colors. He hungered for it. His steps quickened. His shoelace untied. His high tops and his calves were covered in a light layer of dirt, yet there was clarity to what he was doing. Everything was alive, purposeful. He felt dusk’s strange energy in his limbs. He did not hear the helicopter in the distance. He thought only of the mysterious stillness of this place as he moved through it, its fugitive beauty.

When he’d walked until the verge of darkness, he sat on a jagged rock and drank the rest of the water. That’s when he felt cool air. He turned in its direction and saw a dark mound the color of earth, hidden among the cottonwoods. He heard the song of a whip-poor-will and he wondered how he had never heard it before, as if everything had only just been transmitted to him on a frequency he could receive. He crawled in and let the coolness wash his eyelids. The dark smelled of must.

On the ground, he sat in that stillness and took off his sneakers. He freed his toes, wriggling his feet into the sandy dirt, covering them, moving in circles. He was on his own. He got up and spun in a blur. He bounced and shook his body. He tossed his weight from side to side, mimicking the dancers. Every few beats, he’d make himself freeze in mid-step. Then he resumed the dance, drunk on agency. Death to that cord that had wound around him.

Rita stepped out of the bath, cracked open the door. She didn’t hear anything. It was unlikely Devon was reading. He’d be watching t.v. or playing a game.

“Devon,” she called. She wrapped a towel around herself and peered out the door into the hotel room. “What are you doing?”

Her steps quickened to the window. She grabbed her cell phone. It was 5:02 p.m.

She dressed quickly. Outside, she scanned all of the slow moving tourists at the edge of her vision. Her breath grew shallow. She walked briskly around the perimeter of the hotel. She checked in the lobby, in the restrooms, at the vending machines, in the bar, around the parking lot. She asked the desk manager, the waiters, several patrons in the lobby, the students she saw, but no one had seen him. She retraced hers and Devon’s steps from earlier, the rim came into view, and she stopped. The ranger had found her hysterical at the trailhead.

Day Two

There was no sign of him. Rita hadn’t slept, but in the afternoon, she muffled her fear and hiked down 430 feet below the rim before becoming pale and weak. Father Leahy had escorted the other students home. He never returned. She had not been able to reach Richard, her ex.. By late afternoon, there were radio calls, dispatches, checkpoints, flyers, text alerts, a local television crew. The dogs sniffed Devon’s dirty clothes from a garbage bag.

Devon shook throughout the night but did not get up. A sharpness seized whenever he moved. Skin pinched. His throat was parched. The sharp edges of pain stilled him. An eternity passed. His breath faint, he slipped into a watery dream. Rowboats and small craft searched in the reeds along a wild shore. He did not know why …

Day Three

The search resumed. It was Rita’s new way of life. Perfect strangers surrounded her, embraced her, and looked after her. She had new energy though she hummed with emotional exhaustion. A beam shot through her. She had to be with the search party as it fanned out.

They found the water bottle first. There on the rock where Devon stopped and finished the last of it. Devon had traveled west, never descending. A man who worked at the gift shop and had joined the search on his day off saw the water bottle and picked it up. It was his third search since he was hired on the hospitality staff two years ago.

The canyon was candy-striped with shades of lilac and yellow, bathed in an improbable light. Gary from the gift shop kicked earth as he broke into a trot. He was the first to arrive in the darkened space. He later told the television crew something clicked when he saw the metal bottle and sat on the rock. He realized Devon must have sat on it too, then he saw the kiva’s round form; it was the only shade in the area.

Devon was lying inside, knees to chest. The boat hat beside him.

Gary’s eyes adjusted and startled at the sight of him, pushing away his first grim thought. He had been an EMT in another life, was well versed with venipuncture. Devon’s hands and feet were covered in cholla spines. He’d seen this happen to stray pups in the desert. Gary put his ear to Devon’s chest. The beat was there. He scooped him up.

Rita had run too and now she saw Gary as he emerged from the mound, carrying Devon’s limp body in his arms.

Alive. They brought him back.

Over the years, Devon’s mom would recount the story of how he disappeared—and she would rap him on head, snap a dishrag at him, when she told the story.

This one, she’d say, he tortured me.

But Devon never bothered to recall the details of what had happened then.

Then, late one night in the bar near the station after work, he ran into an old friend, someone from Saint Augustine’s. A conversation. Over beer. The friend had just heard of a death. Someone they overlapped with, you knew who he was, the friend had said.

“Didn’t make it to 30. Died too young … You remember him. Soccer player,” the acquaintance said.

Devon thought about it. Not much came up.

“C’mon, brown hair, Kevin. Played soccer, kickball, total athlete.”

“Vaguely,” Devon said. He felt a flash of heat.

Devon sat on the stool and rolled the tip of his napkin. Devon began pooling the memories he had of Kevin, glimpses formed slowly, dotted over a decade or more. There wasn’t much. Then a frame came into view, like a clip from someone else’s film. He felt himself in the desert. He drew back, felt something sharp catch in his throat. He took a quick sip of his beer, the liquid cooled his throat, and he lingered there, trying to rewind. Play it back.

It was Kevin, returning with the ice.

He stepped inside that room with the obscure light of the television animating it. Maybe a second of indecision, before he entered with that bucket. Just then, Devon remembered Father Leahy’s smile. Then the door closed.

SUPPORT

DIVERSE VOICES
IN LITERATURE