Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

They were entering a broad open canyon formed by a long mesa along the north and two smaller ones on the south that opened like gates to the desert beyond. Connolly could see clumps of stone ruins backed against the walls of the canyon, small villages placed up and down the valley. A dusty official pickup truck was parked next to the building at the southeast end of the canyon road. The park ranger, an incongruous uniform in the emptiness, stared casually at her legs as he warned them to take water on the trail. But Emma seemed not to notice his interest, as if she had left all that behind in the miles of desert that separated them from the world. In fifteen minutes they were back on their own, the ranger another shadow, as they ate sandwiches on the kiva wall of the Bonito ruin, their faces lifted to the sun. With his eyes closed, he could hear the faint movement of insects. When he opened them, the sound retreated back into the stillness of the canyon. He looked over at her, at the line of her raised throat running into the now blazing white of her blouse, and marveled at their being here, away from everything.

She guided him through the site, pointing out the masonry patterns, the low chamber entrances, the arrangement of the rooms, so that what had been an inexplicable maze of stones now became real, filled with imagined life. People had lived here, moving from ceremonial kiva to irrigated field to storage room. The valley floor had hummed with noise. As they walked from room to room, the place began to make sense, there was an order to things, and he wondered suddenly if years from now people would walk like this on the Hill, picking their way through its buildings and rituals and puzzles until they arranged themselves in the simple pattern of a town. Maybe it would keep its mysteries too, and maybe they would seem just as inconsequential.

“But why here?” he asked again. “It can’t have been easy to farm here.”

“No,” Emma said. “Frijoles makes sense-there’s a river there. And Mesa Verde-I haven’t been, but presumably it’s green. Of course, they liked difficult places, they were always building on cliff faces and overhangs. But I agree it’s a problem. The archaeologists think there were as many as five thousand people here at the peak, so it may have been an administrative center of some sort. Perhaps religious. I think it’s more likely it was geographic-you’ll see what I mean at the top. It’s pretty much in the middle of their territory, so they may have picked it for just that reason. You know, an artificial capital. Like Canberra or Ottawa.”

“Or Washington.”

“Or Washington. What are you looking at?”

He took her hand. “I’m just looking.”

She was flustered but pleased. “You haven’t listened to a thing I’ve said.”

“Yes I have. They built in the middle of nowhere because it was the middle. Keep the bureaucrats away from the fleshpots.”

He leaned over and kissed her, a soft, long kiss because now there was so much more time.

“That’s never a bad idea, is it?” she said, her face still close to his.

“I don’t know. Maybe they need it more than anybody.” He kissed her again, but then she drew away.

“He’ll see,” she said, nodding her head toward the park station.

Connolly laughed. “All this way and it’s still the neighbors. Is there anywhere we can go?” he asked playfully, taking in the vast stretch of land.

“Later,” she said, pushing him away. “Are you always so anxious?”

“No, I’m shy. I just hate to pass up an opportunity. We could always go behind that wall.”

“No we couldn’t. If you think I’m going to lie down on a kiva for you, you’re very much mistaken.” But she had come closer to him.

“Afraid of disturbing the spirits?”

“Maybe. Maybe I just don’t fancy a stone floor.”

“You can be on top.”

“Later,” she said again, laughing at him. “Come on. You could do with the exercise.”

But the moment had made the emptiness around them sensual. He was aware of her skin in front of him as they climbed up the mesa trail, her leg stretching to a rock footing, flexing as it pulled the rest of her upward. The heat was tangible now, his body suddenly damp with sweat, and the air was busy with the crunch of their boots on the rocks and the sound of breathing. They climbed through a chimney between tall boulders, the path cluttered with loose rocks and sand and the tough root of a broken bush. When they cleared the top, on a shelf of slickrock, he found himself slightly winded, his heart beating faster. Except for the hint of a little breeze, everything around them still lay inert, but the torpor of the valley heat was gone. He felt alive with movement, his leg muscles straining as they went up another steep stretch. She looked behind her and laughed, leaping goatlike to another rock, daring him to follow. The canteen tied to her belt slapped against her hip. A trickle of sweat ran into his eye. The trail switched back, following a series of cairns he imagined the ranger had made, then rose steadily on packed earth until the great ledges of slickrock began, like sidewalks running around the rim of the mesa.

She waited for him on top, her blouse sticking to her, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked south to the valley floor. From here the ruins below took on the cellular shapes of a blueprint, circles and squares spreading out flat with only their dimensions to suggest buildings. She handed him the canteen. In the landscape nothing moved but shimmering heatwaves rising lazily off the desert. They were the only things alive in the world.

They followed the slickrock around the edge, steps away from steep drops into canyons, but the path was level and broad and they could walk together, moving quickly from the view of one site to another. The strain had left his legs and he was unaware of his steps now, buoyant, sometimes not even sensing the cairn markers. When she stopped suddenly, sticking her hand out in front of him, he almost pitched forward, carried by the unconscious momentum. She stood motionless, not breathing, so that the quiet was its own alarm. He darted his eyes around, not seeing anything on the barren slickrock until she extended a finger, pointing silently toward the edge. Ahead of them, on a ledge a few steps below, he saw the gray gnarled twist of an old juniper branch, nothing more, and then his eyes focused and the branch, sharper now, took on markings of gray and brown in a thick unnatural coil. The rattlesnake stirred slightly, adjusting itself to catch the sun, then settled back on the rock. Connolly stood frozen, feeling his muscles twitch with fear. It was the surprise of it, the unexpected lurking while they paid no attention. He had a city boy’s terror of wildlife; it crept up on you, alert only to its own rules. Frantically he looked around the trail for a rock, even a stick, to defend himself. But the snake lay still, coiled motionless in the sun. Connolly felt the slightest sound would arouse it, but Emma was already drawing him away, stepping carefully from the edge. He almost jumped when he saw it move, a nearly imperceptible tremor along the markings as it began to uncoil. He watched, fascinated as prey, while it sluggishly stretched out its length and glided down off its ledge to a sunnier shelf below, unaware of anyone else in its garden. Emma continued quietly moving away and he followed her, his eyes still on the ledge, expecting the snake to spring back. He was embarrassed by his own fear, but his blood kept jumping.

“Shouldn’t we kill it?” he said when they were farther down the path.

“He won’t bother us now. He lives here, you know.”

“But they’re poisonous.”

She smiled, calming him. “I know. But they don’t come after you unless they’re provoked. The first time I heard a rattle, I nearly died, but he was just telling me to go away. At least they give you fair warning. Not everything does. What they don’t like is being surprised.”