Mom backs away, pulling me with her.
The man raises his hands in the air. Easy, he says.
I am looking at his pale skin, the lines around his mouth. He has two chins and only one working eye, or only one that moves anyway. It’s weird—like he’s looking at an invisible person beside you. He’s maybe fifty, his hair gray around his ears. I know I should be scared, but I’m mainly thinking—is this my dad? Is this what he looks like?
Then the guy, my dad, whoever he is, must see that our eyes are on his knife, because he looks up at it, and his mouth drops open. Oh, he says. He pulls a sheath from his pocket, slides the knife into it, puts it away in his jacket. Kindling, he says.
He points with his foot to a little pile of sticks on the ground.
You have to peel off the bark, if it’s green wood. If it’s damp.
Mom has stopped retreating. She nods very slightly. This isn’t my dad, I realize. It’s some random guy.
Let’s start again, says the man. Howdy. He walks over to us, but slowly, like we’re small animals—mice, lizards—that might shy from an approaching figure.
Howdy, says Mom. She’s on edge, I can see it.
You folks vacationing? Or traveling? asks the man.
Both, I guess, says Mom hesitantly. We’re headed to the Grand Canyon, but we’re taking it slow.
Me too, he says. Then he sticks out his hand to shake Mom’s. She flinches instinctively, but then takes it. Luke. My wife died on me there a year back, and I’ve kinda been wandering ever since.
I’m, ah, sorry to hear that, says Mom.
Don’t be, she was a hard-ass, says Luke, without much emotion. Made my life hell for twenty years.
Mom laughs and tucks her hair behind her ear, as if this was a really funny joke. I tilt my head, registering that she’s looking him in the eye too. Is she FLIRTING?
Opening the car door, Mom pulls out the barbecue grill and the plastic bag. Join us for dinner? she says.
Okay, I think. The weird behavior just hit the next level. Where is the shyness? What happened to addressing the ground?
Luke hesitates, looking at the bag. If it’s pork, I can’t, he says.
Mom acts surprised. You Jewish? she says.
No, says Luke. I was a paramedic. First response.
Mom looks at him, like, what?
I don’t wanna spell it out, says Luke. But it’s the smell. After … after a house fire.
I look at him. Joy! The man is talking about burning human flesh! This day just keeps getting better.
Mom has blanched too, like this is too much even for Strange New Confident Mom. But she gets a grip on herself quickly, steps closer to him, and touches his arm. You poor man, she says. And no, it’s burgers. Beef burgers.
Well, all right then, says Luke.
This is officially now by about a factor of 5,000 the worst evening of my life. I mean, Mom touching Luke’s arm as he tells us that pork on a barbecue smells like people burning.
I sit there, eating charred burger, while Luke and Mom continue to revoltingly flirt, like something on the Discovery Channel—Two People Doing a Mating Dance. Mom asks him about being a paramedic, and he tells some stories. They are not entertaining or fun stories. One of them is about a boy who swung too hard at a piñata and smashed in a girl’s face with his stick—she had to have three reconstructive surgeries.
What happened to your leg there? he says to me, after this. Car crash?
No, says Mom. She’s a climber. Fell off a rock.
You don’t climb with a rope? he says to me.
I shrug.
You should be careful, he says. You only get one life.
What I keep telling her, says Mom.
I roll my eyes at her. In real life, when she’s not, oh, suddenly acting like a totally different person, she would as soon see me climb up a rock as she’d give me a loaded pistol and tell me to play some Russian roulette. When I was a kid, she wouldn’t even let me have a bike. Said I could kill myself just by hitting a curb too hard.
So, what? I think. I fell off a ROCK? This means I’m 100 percent, for real, now living in some kind of thriller film where people start lying and suddenly there are violent people chasing you. It would be scary if it wasn’t so totally random.
Your daughter’s not a talker, huh? he says.
Mom laughs. Teenage blues, she replies.
Luke laughs too. Never had kids—wife didn’t want ’em. But I got me a TV. I’ve seen My Super Sweet 16.
Well, she’s not that bad, says Mom. But we have our differences. Climbing without safety ropes is one of them.
Dangerous sport at the best of times, climbing, says Luke to me. You should give it a rest. I’ve seen—
And he launches into this charming story about cutting down a climber who hanged himself with his own rope, by accident. I see Mom go slightly white again, but she has a core of steel, it seems like, because she keeps the smile painted on her face.
I stand up and go sit farther away from the fire, just watching the shadows shifting in the forest. I see something fly past, maybe a bat, maybe an owl. It’s fast; it swoops, and then it’s gone.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mom beckon me over. I lever myself up and go inelegantly on my CAM Walker to her. She nods to Luke.
Luke here is driving south, she says. To Phoenix, then Mexico.
I look at her, like, so what?
He’s been telling me about these … what were they?
Ancient ruins. Pre-Columbus. They’re at the Agua Fria National Monument, like an hour south of here.
I know, I think. We passed it on the way up here.
I told Luke how fascinated I am by prehistory, says Mom.
I think: oh yeah?
He’s offered us a lift tomorrow, she goes on. To see them. And then he’ll bring us back here to our car. Does that sound fun, honey? We’re on vacation, a day off our schedule can’t hurt.
It sounds WEIRD, is what it sounds like, since we’d be going back the way we’ve just come, and we’re supposedly running away.
Also:
He’s a man, I say. Men are bad.
Not all men are bad, says Mom.
I throw my hands up, like, what?
Teenagers, says Luke, and Mom laughs.
You’re going to Flagstaff, right? asks Luke.
Mom nods. To see Route 66.
This is news to me but I don’t say anything.
Shame, says Luke. If you were going south too, we could travel together.
Shame, says Mom. Still, we’ve got the ruins, tomorrow.
Yep, says Luke. We’ve got tomorrow. The way he says this is nauseatingly romantic.
They stay by the fire for a while, chatting, laughing. They talk Apache culture, which I’m surprised to find Mom knows something about. The Navajo Star Chant, whatever that is. Luke gets very excited about something to do with the four sacred colors, or something.
At several points, Mom touches Luke’s arm and I nearly puke.
Finally, she says we’ve got to go to sleep. Luke offers his tent, but, thank God, Mom says no, that we’ll be fine in our car.
We climb in to the back seat, and kind of spoon together. Mom has brought sleeping bags, and we zip them together to make a duvet.
When we see Luke go into his tent, I tap Mom’s shoulder.
What’s the deal? I say. With this Monument place. It’s back the way we came.
Exactly, says Mom.
What do you mean exactly? I thought we were running away.
We are. But now we’re acting unexpected. I mean, your father wouldn’t expect to find us at a tourist destination, with some guy. And if he tracks the rental car … well, we won’t be in it. We’ll be in Luke’s car.
I have to admit there is some kind of logic to this.
This is all freaking me out, Mom, I say.
I know, honey, she says. I know. But we’ll get through it.
Okay, I say. I know we will, because she has said so.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. But there are constellations bursting behind my eyelids, and thoughts racing around like cats, and I can’t settle. I open my eyes again and stare out at the darkness outside the window, the faint glow of the stars.
Clouds pass, and the moon is revealed, an eye opening.
And there, under the trees, is a coyote standing in the light of the moon outside the car.
I think: if a coyote crosses your path, turn back, or terrible things will—
But then I think: screw that. This coyote has turned up like two times now, and it said that weird thing to me about how I would be given two lies and then the truth, and I’ve had just about enough of people messing with my head. People, coyotes, whatever.
I close my eyes for a long moment.
I open them.
And the coyote is gone, like it was never there.