EVENTUALLY WE CLEANED out the chicken house by the garden and used it for a place to meditate. We’d sit in there like hens waiting for something to hatch. Mostly what hatched were thoughts.
“Hey, Gauguin, I was thinking we should go backpacking,” I said.
Gauguin turned his head slowly. “Is that what you come up with after a half-hour of meditating?”
“Yes, and let’s go for a whole week,” I said.
We went to the back country of Bandelier, a national monument of ancient pueblo ruins. The dirt road leading to the unexcavated ruins in the back country was rocky, the muffler on Betsy Boop fell off, and we spent a lot of time trying to wire it back. Neither Gauguin nor I was a mechanical genius. We finally threw it in the back seat and chugged loudly to the trail head, arriving in the late afternoon. We hiked in three miles until it became too dark to see, then laid out our sleeping bags, crawled in them, and skipped dinner. I must have been asleep for about an hour when I woke to the heavy breathing of an animal. I jerked up and saw two eyes staring at me in the moonlight. I could tell it was huge.
“Gauguin,” I whispered urgently. He was deep in sleep. “Gauguin.” I reached out my arm and shook him.
“What?” he said, his breath smoky with dreams.
“Gauguin, there’s an animal out there!”
His body jerked in his sleeping bag. “Where?” He squinted and felt the ground next to him for his glasses.
“Right there.” I pointed.
The animal shifted its weight. Yeah, I just heard him. You’re right. I think he’s watching us,” Gauguin said in a hoarse whisper. “And I think he’s big.”
“What should we do?” I asked.
“What can we do?” he answered. “Let’s just lie here awhile.”
I was sure it was a dinosaur or the ghost of a medicine man. We should never have come to a place full of ancient ruins, I thought. Gauguin fell back asleep. I stayed up alone, guardian of the great animal, mostly hoping to guard myself. The animal didn’t leave, but it stayed where it was and didn’t come closer.
The sky finally turned blue gray. I dared to look in the animal’s direction. I lifted my head off the rolled-up towel I used as a pillow and squinted to see better. Staring back at me was a red cow! Not the kind you milk, the kind you eventually eat. It must have gotten lost and, lonesome, wanted to stay near us for company.
With my feet still in the bag, I kicked Gauguin to wake him. “Let’s go. The sun is coming up.” When I spoke aloud, the cow wandered off.
We hiked through fields of wild flowers, dark boulders, and forest, finally moving into more desert land. We turned toward a stream.
“Let’s rest,” I said, flinging off my pack and sitting down by the stream, taking off my shoes and socks. I cracked open a chocolate bar.
“Rose, now remember,” Gauguin cautioned. “We each have one chocolate bar and it has to last the full week we’re here. It’s our only sugar treat this summer.”
Uh-huh, I nodded.
The sun settled on my bare knees and I warmed my hands in patches of light that fell between leaves. Then I turned to Gauguin. “You know, I don’t care, Gauguin. I’m gonna eat the whole thing,” I said. I tore off the wrapper and bit off a chunk. It was good. The bite had a whole almond in it. “Want some?” I asked, offering it up in a magnanimous gesture.
“No. Now remember, I’m not sharing mine with you on the fifth night out here. We each have our own,” he repeated.
I laid back on the edge of the stream and looked up through the oak leaves. “Gauguin, you couldn’t be so cruel. What if I promise to make love to you eight hundred times this week?”
“Cute, Nell, real cute. But no. You’ll have to live without chocolate if you finish yours.” I grimaced. I already had finished it.
Oh, who cared. I smiled. No brontosaurus had eaten me last night. That was all that mattered.
“Let’s go.” Gauguin put on his shoes.
We followed the stream, which cut a swath of green through land that was mostly rock, arroyo, and cactus. After hiking five miles, we found a good spot to camp under a cottonwood, near a place where the water formed a pool. This would be our base camp and we could hike out to the ruins for a few hours at a time. There was no water near the ruins.
Each morning, Gauguin worked on a song about a waterbug. It was not going well. If he asked me, I would have told him a waterbug was nothing to write a song about, but he never asked me and I kept my mouth shut. I had other things to do. I was drawing airplanes and coloring them in with a box of pastels I had brought. I drew houses the way kids do, with smoke coming out the chimney, and colored tall buildings with many windows. No nature drawings. Nature was too hard to draw. I was just having fun, not caring if what I drew expressed anything deep. I read Tortilla Flat while Gauguin sat by the stream and watched waterbugs for inspiration. He watched them real hard and then wrote fast for three pages, hoping something brilliant would flow from his pen. Nothing brilliant came, and he ripped the used pages out of his notebook and balled them up. We used that paper to start campfires.
Near the end of the week, I filled a plastic bag full of water, clasped it with a rubber band, and ventured out by myself into the desert and the unexcavated ruins. The sun was hot, and there was no shade. In the daytime, Gauguin and I wore no clothes, so I was very brown. I put on only my sneakers to go out to the ruins.
The ruins in the back country looked like sand mounds. Cacti grew through the doors and windows of the timeless structures. As I climbed over a fallen wall toward the doorway to a small room, there was the eerie feeling that the ancient Indians were with me, and I wasn’t sure they approved of what a human being had become. I felt self-conscious and wished I had worn clothes. Decades of pale dirt had filled in any square corners. My utter aloneness in the small room scared me and I climbed out quickly.
On top of a buried mound, I found a red anthill. It was the only action in this ghost town, so I squatted down to watch, feeling the sun on my back. Two ants dragged a dead fly up the hill. One lost its half of the fly and ran behind to push. Ants crawled in and out of a hole in the center of the hill. My attention was riveted.
Suddenly, I sucked in my breath. A bit of blue emerged from the center hole, balanced on the back of an ant. I looked closer. It was a turquoise bead—very small with a hole in it, a sky pearl you could string on a necklace. My fingers moved fast. I grabbed it, toppling two red ants. I stood up and stepped away from the hill, holding it in my open palm. It was so small. I groped for a pocket to put it in, but I had no pockets. I was naked. I stuck the bead in my mouth, under my tongue for safekeeping.
I ran most of the way back. I was so excited—I couldn’t believe my find. The ancient people had given something to me. I wanted to show Gauguin. Leaping over a dirt mound, both legs spread in the air like scissors, I swallowed it. It wasn’t big enough to feel go down, but I knew it. I stopped dead. The last of the American Indians, and I had been stupid enough to swallow it. I took a deep breath and walked steadily back to camp, half angry, half foolish, and another half wild—I had ancient turquoise inside me.
Gauguin was by the stream, still watching waterbugs, and his shoulders were burning in the sun. I leaned down over him and pushed him back on the soft dirt, held him by the arms, and stared at him hard. “Forget the waterbugs,” I said. Gauguin was below me, watching. My face elongated into a beak. I had the force of an eagle. I lifted him in my talons, and together we flew over the trees by the stream, then past that, over the ruins, then higher into the blue sky until sunlight obliterated everything. We flew in that light, in circles and half circles, rolling over each other. I could have traveled for a long time, but I lost Gauguin.
He fell to earth, suddenly sat up, and went over to the campfire to make dinner. He stirred the brown rice with a fork, slowly dropping in salt granules from between two fingers. I walked over.
“Banana, I’m sorry, but I feel frustrated about that song. You’re in a different space.” He paused. I was quiet. “Besides, this is it. We have nothing left to eat. I told you we should have carried in more.”
“I’m hungry,” I said. It was my only response.
“Tomorrow, if you want to stay—”
“I want to stay,” I cut him off.
“We have to fast,” he finished his sentence.
“Okay by me.” I was determined.
He turned his back to me. I didn’t bother telling him about the turquoise. I went down by the stream and hunched at its edge, watching the water’s moving light. His disappointment wasn’t going to taint me. It was too good here to let anything bother me for long. Gauguin would get over his snit. I let the air comfort me. It was the best time of day, right before the sun goes down. Cool but not cold, long shadows and a soft quiet in the trees.
“Nell,” Gauguin called. “The rice is almost ready. Want some?”
I hesitated. I walked over to the fire. “Okay.” I nodded and picked up a bowl.
“Of course,” he said slowly, “I’ve been saving my chocolate.” He was in a completely different mood.
My face lit up. I forgave him everything. “Gimme!” I reached out my hand and fell from a squat onto my butt.
He shook his head and laughed.
“Gauguin, I will do anything.” Then I tried a new tactic: I looked demure.
Sorry, there’s nothing I will want after dinner more than chocolate.” He grinned.
“Me either,” I said.
After we ate the very last rice kernel in our bowls, Gauguin pulled out his Kit Kat. I forgot he hadn’t gotten a Cadbury, like I had.
I pleaded with my eyes.
“No, and quit looking at me like that,” he said.
He opened the aluminum foil. Four wafers. He broke off one and ate it slowly. I watched and then I grabbed. He blocked me. “Now, now, Rose.” He was cruel.
I knew what a dog felt like. He finished his second wafer, first holding it up in front of me. I sat still. He looked down, paused. “Here, you can have the last two.” He reached out his hand.
I jumped, then stopped. “Let’s share the last two.”
Gauguin was startled. “Okay, thanks,” and we both smiled. He handed me one and we ate them at the same time. “Why, Rose, sometimes I think you’re growing up.” I knew I wasn’t, but I let him think whatever he wanted.
We fasted the next day. “Banana, let’s leave half a day early and have chile rellenos at Sophie’s.” Gauguin was never good on a fast.
“No.” I was resolute.
“Well, well, Miss—excuse me—Ms. Determination,” he said, and we stayed.
The next day, high from fasting and a week of living in the woods, we ran down along the narrow footpaths at the edge of stone cliffs, my lightened red knapsack streaming through the green needles of ponderosa pine, and Gauguin’s white sneakers flopping against the beige and then red earth. The smell of the outdoors went straight into our bodies and stayed there as we hit the old car and dashed out through rutted roads to civilization, to Santa Fe, to Sophie’s.
We sat in the pale blue-green wooden booths, and both ordered chile rellenos with green chile. After the woods, humanity seemed extraordinary. There were forks, napkins, water in glasses, a table to lean our elbows on, and signs spelling out, MOCHA CAKE, PEACH COBBLER, DUTCH APPLE PIE, CHEESECAKE, HOT FUDGE SUNDAE. What an amazing thing a human being was! Not only could we bake cakes, we could have posters saying what we baked, and the mere reading of the poster made my eyes water, my mouth go slack.
I thumped my fingers on the blue tabletop and watched plates of food go by. “Maybe I should have gotten enchiladas,” I told Gauguin.
“Naa, Sophie’s rellenos are the best.” He waved his hand. We were both hungry.
I nodded. He was right.
The waitress brought us our plates. “These are hot. Careful.” She held them with potholders and placed them before us.
The green chile poured to the edge of the plate was still bubbling. On the side were pinto beans and Spanish rice.
I reached for a flour tortilla. I put a pat of butter on it, which slid off, leaving a trail of yellow liquid.
“Hey, these are hot,” I exclaimed admiringly.
“Banana, your hands look like monkey paws.” Gauguin watched me tear the tortilla in half.
The white cheese oozed out of the relleno as I cut it with my fork. I used the tortilla to collect it and I also smeared it in the sauce. “Ummm, good.” It was finally in my mouth.
“I wonder how they stuff these?” Gauguin called over the waitress and ordered a cup of coffee.
“Who cares?” I said with another bite in my mouth. “I’m going to get peach cobbler for dessert.” I gulped some water. “This was the best trip I’ve ever had. What was your favorite part?”
“Well, it wasn’t trying to write that damn song about the waterbug. What was yours?” He looked up at me.
“Everything,” I said, feeling the turquoise inside of me.