Richard Ford - A Multitude of Sins

“That’ll work. Whatever,” Howard said, reaching down where he’d removed his shoe to pick at his raised, big toenail as if he was thinking of pulling it off.

She might even be harming herself by associating with this man. Possibly he posed a threat, staring at his huge toenail. What could he be thinking? Something sinister. She’d excuse herself to use the rest room the minute they were out of the car, then get away from him. Call the police and say he was stalking her. Let him find his pitiful way back to Phoenix alone. She thought of his wife’s pained expression, seen like a wraith out in the night sky of Phoenix two nights ago. She could have him back.

“Do you like things complicated or simple?” Howard said, still worrying his toenail.

“Simple,” she said.

“Hm. I guessed so,” he said idly. “Me, too.”

“I’ve realized that.”

“Yeah,” he said, straightening up to stare at the traffic. “Right.”

Entering South Rim Village was also entering the National Park. Cars were required to follow designated paved roads you couldn’t deviate from and that wound one-way-only through pretty pine groves where traffic quickly piled up. All the drivers were patient, though, and didn’t honk or try to turn around. This was the only answer to the numbers problem: orderly flow, ingress/egress, organized parking, stay in your vehicle. Otherwise people would drive straight to the rim, get out and leave their vehicles for hours, just like at the mall. When she’d imagined it, there’d been no traffic, and she’d ridden up on a palomino, stopped at the rim and stared for hours, alone with her thoughts.

“Everything’s just about moving people through,” Howard said. He’d run his seat forward, pushed his knees up and was watching the traffic, engrossed. “What you or I see or do is beside the point. People have to be moved or the system breaks down.” He scratched his hand over the top of his bristly hair, then pulled at his ear. “Real estate’s exactly the same thing. People move somewhere, and we find ’em a place. Then they move someplace else, and we find them another place. It doesn’t matter where they finally are — which is not what we were taught to understand in school, of course. We’re supposed to think where we are does matter. But it’s like a shark’s life. Dedicated to constant moving.” He nodded at this conception.

“I think they come here for very good reasons,” Frances said. The campers and land yachts took up too much space was what she was thinking. The problem was cramped space, not movement. The Grand Canyon was open space. “People don’t just move to be moving. I wasn’t dying to drive and somebody dreamed up a Grand Canyon for me. That’s stupid.”

“Civilization,” Howard said dully, paying no attention, “coming up here, working up here, living up here — all these thousands of people. It’s like an airport, not a real place. If we ever get to see the fucking Grand Canyon, if it’s not just a myth, it’ll be like being in an airport. Looking at it will be like looking at a runway where the planes are all lined up. That’s why I’d rather stay home instead of getting herded here and herded there.” He sniffed through his wide nostrils.

And now he was beginning to ruin things, just the way she’d feared but had promised herself not to let him. She looked at him and felt herself actually grimace. She needed to get away from this man. She felt willing to push him right out the door onto the road, using her foot. Though that would be hysterical, and scare him to death. She would have to try to ignore him a little longer, until they were out of the car. She produced a displeasing mental picture of Howard whamming away on her in the grubby, awful little teepee with beetles all over the floor and no TV. What had that been about? All those thoughts she’d thought. What was her brain doing? How desperate was she?

“There’s that Indian from the motel.” Howard pointed at a young man with a long black ponytail, wearing jeans and a green T-shirt. He was walking across the sunny parking lot into which a park ranger in a pointed hat, and standing beside a little hut, was flagging traffic. The Indian was in with the tourists hiking out of the lot up a paved path Frances knew had to lead to the canyon rim. This would be fine, she thought. It was too late to ruin it now. “Maybe he’s one of the ancient spirit people.” Howard smirked. “Maybe he’s our spiritual guide to the Grand Canyon.”

“Shut up,” Frances said, swerving into a slot among other parked cars and campers. Families were leaving vehicles and legging it in the direction the Indian had gone. Some were hurrying as if they couldn’t wait another minute. She felt that way. “Maybe you can go buy us a sandwich. I’ll come find you in a while.” She was looping her camera around her neck, eager to get out.

“I guess not.” Howard pushed open his door with his sneaker and began unfolding his long legs. “I couldn’t miss this. Haven’t you ever stood beside a construction site and looked in the hole. That’s what this’ll be. It’ll be a blast.”

She looked at him coldly. A chill, pine-freshened breeze passed softly through the opened car doors. There were plenty of other people come to admire the great vista, the spiritual grandeur and the natural splendor. It was with them that she would experience the canyon. Not this loser. When it was all over, he could decide it was his idea. But in an hour he’d be history, and she could enjoy the ride back to Phoenix alone. None of this would take long.

Down the hill from the parking lot and through the pine trees, set away from where the tourists went, Howard could see what looked like barracks buildings with long screened windows, painted beige to blend with the landscape. These were dormitories. Like going to basketball camp in the Catskills. A boy and a girl — teenagers — were toting a mattress from one barracks building to another, and giggling. You got used to it, he imagined. Days went by probably, and you never even saw the Grand Canyon or thought a thing about it. It was exactly like working in an airport.

Frances was hurrying up the path, paying no attention to him. There had to be Weiboldt people up here, he thought, folks who’d recognize them and get the whole picture in a heartbeat. They stood out like Mutt and Jeff. No way to get away with anything. His father always said it didn’t matter who knew what you did, only what you did. And what they’d been doing was fucking and riding around in a rental car on company time — which was probably a federal crime anymore. Plus, Frances seemed not to like him much now, though he didn’t see how he’d done anything particularly wrong, except go to sleep too fast in the motel. He was perfectly happy to be up here with her, happy to take part if they didn’t stay all day. He realized he was hungry.

Coming up the path, you couldn’t actually tell that there was something to see up ahead, just a low rock wall where people had stopped, and a lot of blue sky behind it. An airplane, a little single-engine, puttered along through that sky.

And then, all at once, just very suddenly, he was there; at the Grand Canyon, beside Frances who had her camera up to her face. And there was no way really not to be surprised by it — the whole Grand Canyon just all right there at once, opened out and down and wide in front of you, enormous and bottomless, with a great invisible silence inhabiting it and a column of cool air pushing up out of it like a giant well. It was a shock.

“I don’t want you to say one single thing,” Frances said. She wasn’t looking through her camera now, but had begun to stare right into the canyon itself, like she was inhaling it. Sunlight was on her face. She seemed blissed.