Forrest Gander - The Trace

They walked toward the car the way they had come, but this time the street was deserted and quiet. After the intense heat of the afternoon, there had arrived a perceptible slackening of the temperature. It was getting dark quickly, and the nearly full moon floated in a broth of stars.

They were passing the aquarium playground. A boy of about ten was in one of the three swings, sitting, looking their way.

Hoa opened the gate and greeted the boy.

“Buenas noches,” she offered.

Dale followed up, although he felt pummeled by the road, tired, and he definitely didn’t feel like talking. He asked in Spanish, “Is it alright if we sit with you for a minute?”

The boy didn’t respond and Dale wondered if his grammar had been clear. The boy was in the swing furthest from the street, rocking very slightly. Under each of the swings, the sand was scooped out, filled with pools of shadow. Hoa took the first swing and Dale the middle one. He asked the boy where his parents were, where the townspeople had gone, and the boy kept silent.

This is like the Twilight Zone, Dale thought. The people of the town go missing. The single remaining child is mute.

“La iglesia,” the boy answered politely in an impossibly quiet voice, looking at his sneakers.

“¿Son Americanos?”

“Si, somos,” Hoa answered.

Dale asked in Spanish, “Is it some kind of festival?”

“No es un festival,” the boy answered.

“What then?” Dale asked. Hoa got out of her seat and stood behind the boy as though she were going to give him a push in his swing.

Dale caught her eyes over the boy’s shoulder.

“Es para Clarita,” the boy said.

Hoa heard the name Clarita. She wanted to try her Spanish but couldn’t formulate her syntax before the boy spoke again.

He said, “Ella se perdió en el desierto.”

“What did he say?” Hoa asked.

“She got lost in the desert. Just a second,” Dale turned back to the boy. “That’s terrible,” he said.

The boy was quiet, pushing back just far enough so that his shoes came off the ground, and then as he swung forward, stopping himself with his toes. Barely perceptible puffs of dust stirred up into the twilight’s open mouth. The boy looked straight ahead as though he were in conversation with someone else.

Behind him, Hoa felt suspended between movements, disconnected.

Maybe the boy wanted to talk, Dale thought, keeping himself from blurting out the obvious question. He hoped Hoa would hold back too and give the boy time. Small bats whickered above them. The music from the barbecoa was imperceptible now and the multitude of stars had begun to press more distinctly into view.

“La encontraron esta mañana.”

“So. Where was she?”

“Intentó hacer una pared con piedras.”

Hoa walked to the side of the swings, resting her hand on the scuffed frame. The Spanish was too hard for her.

“I’m going to stretch my legs,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Dale tried to read her eyes before she turned away. Did she want him to come with her? Would she be pissed if he stayed? Had he taken over a conversation she had initiated? The boy waited quietly, until Hoa closed the gate behind her. She hesitated on the other side of the wall in the moonlight as though she were reconsidering. Then she started up the sidewalk, glancing once toward Dale. If she were sending him a message, a sign of some kind, Dale couldn’t read it. He thought she would be fine on her own for a few minutes, and now he wanted to stay to hear the boy out. He turned back to the boy and asked why the girl would want to make a stone wall in the desert.

The boy went on then in Spanish, gradually growing more animated. “My uncle took us out to his ranch. We were sitting and bouncing on the balls in the back of his truck,” he said.

“Your uncle keeps balls in the back of his truck?”

“Soccer balls. But the motor stopped and we had to walk all the way back.”

“Did you have to walk far?”

“Muy largo. The road goes like this to the barranca.”

The boy was making eye contact now, although it was too dark to see his face clearly. He looked somber, formal, but he spoke in bursts like he wanted to get something out. His hand dipped and rose in the air with the arc of a swallow.

“Clarita, she wanted to go straight across the barranca. But it was steep and Uncle was carrying little Miguel. So he said Clarita could take the shortcut and we would meet her on the other side.”

“But when you got to the other side of the barranca, Clarita wasn’t there?”

“We called and called, but she didn’t answer. Uncle he was running back and forth, shouting and shouting. He scared me, his head scared me.”

Dale didn’t get that. Scared of his uncle’s head?

“When he came back to the trees for us, he said we had to go on. Nobody talked the whole way. We just walked. Miguel was crying, but Uncle wouldn’t stop. His head was hurting him. And when we came to Señor Urrutia’s ranch, it was late.”

“It took you until night to get back?”

“Señor Urrutia brought us home. My mother was crying in the kitchen. I went to bed, but my father woke me and carried me outside in the dark. There were four trucks by our house and men in them and we all came back to the desert. We parked right by the trees at the barranca. It was morning then and the men were arguing. They went in different directions calling for Clarita. I walked with my father. We climbed down into the barranca to find her.”

“So it was a big search party.”

“It was.” He stared down at his shoes. The moon was swallowed by cloud. Wearing dark pants and a white shirt, the boy was dressed for church. In his face, only his teeth were visible in the dark. Following his lead, Dale looked down under his own swing at the drag pit in the sand. Just as he looked up again, something enormous swooped through the air ten feet in front of the swing set, a dark-luminating black mass that lifted into the pine tree at the edge of the park. The boy had seen it too. Denser than the darkness, like a floating negative space.

“Búho,” the boy said. “Es un búho.”

“Yes.” Now Dale could make out its horned profile against the sky. “Yes, it is.”

Still looking at the owl on its branch, he asked the boy, “Clarita, how old was she?”

“We’re the same age.”

“And you?”

“Nine.”

“And why aren’t you with your parents in church?”

The boy might have hunched his shoulders. In the shadow of the park, Dale tried to think of what to say. The owl let out four long morbid hoots.

“Nobody even found her. Only they found some of her clothes. And a pile of rocks where she tried to make a wall.”

“Why was she making a wall?”

“For the coyotes,” the boy said. “But the coyotes took her.”

Boy and man nearly naked

in the surf, excessively

incarnate, arms sprung out

from their sides, each

aware of the other intent

on the approaching waves.

From where she stands

wrapped in towel, windblown

sand pricking her calves, she sees

alertness in their shoulders

and necks as they bob forward

lithe as boxers and duck under

and are gone and come bursting up

at the same moment in a search

for one another. Let loose, what

belonged to her.

Sliding his sunglasses onto the dashboard, Dale reached for the hood release, pulled it, and then opened his door into the epidemic of heat.

“Jesus,” he said, turning his head so the word was directed back into the car as he unfolded himself from his seat and stepped out onto the shard-strewn dirt. It wasn’t the sun so much as the dry air that made him blink. He instinctually started to close his door, caught himself, and left it open. With the doors shut and the engine off, the interior of the car would become a convection oven.